My Arms Were Always Around You
by ubiconcordia
Summary: Elsa looks at Anna, asleep in her arms, and she knows then that she would follow Anna unquestioningly to the ends of the Earth, across lifetimes, over centuries. Or: In 2019, Anna Andersen runs away from her wedding and stumbles upon a mysterious blonde stranger who seems to know her a little too well. [reincarnation AU; canon-compliant]
1. slide into my head

**2019, somewhere in New England**

Anna hears the words, but she doesn't really _hear _them.

"Do you, Anna Andersen, take this man, Jonathan Kemper, to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, to love, honor and obey, in good times and woe, for richer or poorer, keeping yourself solely unto him for as long as you both shall live?"

Johnny looks down at her and smiles his hollow smile, the one he always gives her. It doesn't reach his eyes. It never does. She knows it never will.

How did she get here? What happened to her? Her ears are ringing, and she's suddenly painfully aware of the eyes of all sixty of their closest family and friends on them (what a joke - Anna knows, like, _maybe _a quarter of the guests well enough to have a conversation with them?). Their gazes bore into her until she feels like her skin is on fire.

"I," she starts, because she's been quiet for long enough now that it's strange. "I -"

She can see the hint of a frown setting in between Johnny's brows. _Really? __Here? __Now? _she can almost hear him say. _Don't __make __a __scene, __Anna._

"I can't."

Anna runs.

xxx

Her mind is blind panic. She needs to find somewhere to _go_, to hide or lay low for a while until she can get her thoughts in order. Thinking things through has never really been her strong suit. But she's running out of time to think - the extra seconds she bought for herself with the element of surprise are quickly running out, and everyone will be out looking for her soon. The farmhouse where the ceremony was taking place is fairly remote, separated from the main road by a miles-long trail that cuts through picturesque fields.

_Uber?_ No. Her phone is in Johnny's pocket. Shit. But the thought of Ubering away from her wedding is enough to make her giggle to herself as she runs - or, really, stumbles, now that the trail has pitched a bit downhill. There's _no __one _here. She's so fucking stupid - what did she think was going to happen? She could just sprint away from responsibility and consequences and magically find a solution?

Then - Anna spots a flash of something metal - hears a low rumble - rounds a corner to see a car idling on the side of the trail. She can hear vehicles behind her and makes a split-second decision that amounts to _Fuck __it, __guess __today's __the __day __to __terrify __a __stranger_ and raps urgently on the car's driver's-side window.

She realizes then that she's looking at – oh, holy shit – the most beautiful girl she's ever seen in her life. Her breath escapes her for a moment. The woman inside the car jumps, drops the book she was holding. Startled eyes meet hers through the glass - _electric _blue, which Anna only has time to notice because for a moment, the woman inside just stares at her, wide-eyed. Anna knocks on the window again, tap tap tap-tap tap. The woman lowers the window slowly, looking cautious.

"Hi," Anna says breathlessly. "Um, I know this is really weird and I'm so sorry, but I really really need a ride out of here and I can pay you when we get back into town but I just really need a way to get home right now. Pleasepleaseplease I don't know what else I'll do if you say no please."

The woman's blank look of shock softens into something resembling curiosity and, perhaps, a wary concern, which makes sense. Anna is, after all, a woman in a wedding dress desperately begging for an escape.

"And I can explain this," Anna says, gesturing to her dress.

Her mystery savior pauses another moment to take her in, then nods. "Okay. Get in."

_Really?!_ Maybe it's not actually such a great idea to get in the car of a stranger who so easily agrees to it. But that's a thought to deal with another time, when she isn't been actively chased by her previously betrothed. She squeals with relief and sprints to the other side of the car, clambering in, and the girl wastes no time in putting the car in drive and speeding away. In the rearview mirror Anna sees the faintest shadow of Johnny's father's Mercedes.

"Wow. Okay. There we go. That wasn't so hard." She lets in a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "I'm so sorry. And thank you."

"There's no need to be sorry. And you're welcome. Where am I taking you?"

"Um, I just need to get back to the main road for now and…I'll figure it out from there. Kinda playing it by ear," she says, with a humorless chuckle.

The woman nods. "We're about twenty minutes from the road."

There's something odd about the way this girl talks - not in a bad way, just a bit _off_ \- and Anna files away a mental note of it. They fall into silence. Silence makes Anna antsy.

"My name's Anna," she offers, finally.

There's a beat of silence as the woman sucks in a deep breath, lets it out slowly, in the same measured way that Anna would breathe sometimes, back flat against the bathroom door as Johnny cursed up a storm on the other side. _Johnny_. What she did still doesn't feel real.

"Elsa," the woman finally says.

"Whoa! Sounds fancy. Like royalty," she says. No response from the stranger – Elsa – so she tries again. "You know, like, 'Queen Elsa the First! Long may she reign.'"

Out of the corner of her eye, Anna sees the woman – Elsa – crack a small smile. When she notices Anna looking, she hastily rearranges her features back to the serious expression she was wearing before. She does actually look kind of regal.

"All thanks go to my parents for that, I suppose. If I may ask, what, um..." Elsa glances away from the road to look at Anna in all her wedding finery. "Are you getting married?"

Anna smooths down the folds of her dress proudly. All things considered, she does look _damn _good. "Yup! Or, well, I was, I guess. Not anymore. Obviously. Or maybe it's not that obvious. In case it's not obvious, I'm running away from my own wedding."

Elsa lets out a quiet chuckle. Anna likes the sound – it's warm. "Right."

"It's a long story. I'll tell you eventually, but for right now…I don't know. I don't really want to think about it yet, to be honest." Her voice dwindles to a mumble.

"Okay," Elsa says. "Talk about something else then."

She realizes why Elsa's speech sounds so odd. It sounds…stilted, rehearsed, like Elsa's running every word through a mental proofreader a million times before she says anything. There's that regality again. Even the way she sits in her seat, Anna notices, screams _practiced_ – back ramrod straight, dainty fingers placed just-so on the wheel. Something about her just seems taut.

And she notices, again, how pretty Elsa is. No, not _pretty_ – gorgeous, ethereal. Her hair is so blonde it's almost white, drawn back into a single heavy braid that rests on one shoulder. Her features are delicate, dainty, and of course there are those _eyes_.

"Anna?"

Whoops. How long was she just sitting there staring? "Sorry. Just lost in thought. And it's _An-na_, not _Ahh-na_, by the way."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Ahh-na does sound prettier, though. Anyway. What was that about talking about something else?"

"Well," Elsa says, in her measured, careful way. "I was just saying that if your wedding is a, ah…sensitive subject…you could talk about something else to take your mind off it, if you like."

Anna perks up. Talking is a talent of hers. "Okay! You pick."

Elsa gives her a sidelong glance. "I – pick what?"

"What we talk about!"

"Oh." She fidgets with the end of her braid. "Uh...what kind of food do you like?"

"Oh my gosh," Anna starts. It's oddly kind of this stranger to offer her this out, to ask her questions as if she has any reason to care about anything other than when she can fulfil her bare minimum moral duty and get Anna out of her car. "Anything and everything, really. I love chocolate. Pasta. Baked goods. Um…you can never go wrong with fondue. _Love _a good aebleskiver, you probably haven't heard of that but you _need _to try it if you ever get the chance. I dunno. I'll eat anything." She pauses to take a breath. "What about you?"

Elsa appears to genuinely and thoughtfully consider the question. "I don't really know. I've always been too busy to really relish food the way it should be appreciated. I suppose I like chocolate too."

"What? You don't like _food_?"

"I just don't have the luxury of _enjoying _food very often."

"Why would you ask me a question if you didn't have an answer for it?"

"The question was what kind of food do _you _like, not what kind of food do _I _like." Elsa says this completely seriously, without a hint of humor. It's oddly endearing.

"Oooookay. Well, ask me something else. That you can talk about too so it's not just me babbling at you."

"Fine. What is…your favorite season?"

Anna's seriously playing 20 questions with a stranger on her wedding day. It's really only a matter of time before they work up to _are you a virgin?_ "Honestly? I like them all in their own way."

"That is not an answer."

She snorts. This girl is _so _weird – yet Anna finds herself a little charmed by her earnestness. "Wow, alright. I guess…if I had to pick one…I'd say winter."

At that, Elsa glances over at her, the hint of a smile playing around the corners of her mouth. "And why is that?"

"Well, summer's nice, you get to be outside and stuff, but there's bees everywhere and you're always sweaty. Spring is basically like three months of nothing. Fall is fine but it's cold enough to be cold but not cold enough to appreciate being warm."

"You've just given me reasons for not liking spring, summer, and fall, but no mention of winter yet."

Anna laughs out loud, and this earns a quiet chuckle from Elsa. Maybe she does have a sense of humor after all! "If you don't stop nitpicking my answers I'm going to jump out of this moving vehicle and walk right back to my wedding. And you didn't let me finish! Winter is just so _cozy_. It's always just made me think of home. I love when it's all snowy outside and you're building snowmen and it's freezing but you know you have a warm house waiting for you. Just the feeling of being all warm around a fire, drinking hot chocolate with people you love. I guess you can do that in any season but that's just what winter reminds me of. You know?"

Elsa is silent, at that. Anna wonders if she weirded her out – she knows she's too long-winded. _Reel it in, Andersen, you don't actually know each other_. "I can't say that I do know. But that's sweet. It's good that you have memories like that to look back on."

She looks pensive, almost sad. Anna feels an inexplicable rush of sympathy for this utter stranger. She wishes she could get to know her well enough to discover what lies underneath the way Elsa looks out the windshield; she hopes Elsa has someone in her life who loves her. "Okay, it's my turn to be invasive. What's your favorite season?"

"Spring." Elsa smiles. "Mostly because it means winter is over."

Anna groans. "That's boring. I gave you something deep."

Elsa doesn't say anything, just keeps driving with that small, lopsided smile on her face. The road winds on and on, past fields full of bright strawberries, crawling grapevines, apples waiting to be plucked from their branches. The sun is high in the sky – it's probably just past noon. She would've been _so _sweaty by now if she had stayed.

The venue had been Johnny's idea. Anna had dreamed of her wedding day for as long as she could remember, had had a Pinterest board for it and everything. She'd had it _all _planned out: what kind of dress she would wear, what kind of decorations she wanted (rustic, but classy), and that it had to be a ceremony in a church back home, so her whole family could make it.

Then she got engaged, and she told Johnny about all her plans, and he'd smiled down at her and said, _Oh, Anna, you're so cute. But you know my grandparents have all that property out East, right? Both my brothers got married there. It's tradition; my family expects it. _

She hadn't registered then that the feeling in her chest was her heart sinking. She had told herself: he's so sweet, he's such a planner, he loves tradition. Her parents couldn't afford the trip out to New England, so she had told them, _it's okay, this part is just for his family, he said we can have another ceremony closer to home with you guys_.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"We're here," Elsa says. They're parked in a large lot in front of a building that looks like a highway rest stop.

For a second, Anna just looks at her. She keeps forgetting that she has to actually keep moving forward with life now, and that it's not over just because she managed to be brave for the split-second it took to run from the altar.

She takes a deep breath and decides the best course of action is to just act as cavalier as possible about the whole thing and hope her false confidence translates into some semblance of a plan that will actually get her home. "Well, I guess this is it then!"

Elsa's eyes follow her movements as she gathers up the folds of her dress and gingerly steps out of the car. "What are you going to do now?"

"I think I'll, uh…" She trails off. "I guess maybe wait for a bus? Call an Uber to my hotel?" Wait, shit, shit, shit, she doesn't have her phone and Johnny will probably get back to their hotel faster than she can.

"You're going to wait for a bus or call an Uber," Elsa repeats, her voice skeptical. She keeps watching Anna with that careful, wary gaze. "Then what?"

"Well, then I go home. Start putting the pieces of my life back together."

"Where is home for you?"

"…Ohio," Anna says sheepishly.

Elsa looks away, stares down at the steering wheel, chewing on her bottom lip. Her brow is furrowed like she's deep in thought. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. "_God_, okay," she mutters, more to herself than anything else. She turns back to Anna. "Get back in the car."

"Wait," Anna falters. "What?"

"I said, get back in the car."

Anna does as she's told.

"Listen," Elsa says. "I'm headed west too. I leave tomorrow. I could take you…closer to home." Anna's shock must be written clear on her face, because after a beat of silence, Elsa adds, "if you wanted, I mean. To save you a plane ticket. Ohio is on my way, anyway, so, you know. Why not do a good deed while I'm at it."

She sounds like she's trying to convince herself as much as Anna, but hey, who is Anna to look a gift horse in the mouth? "Wait, are you for real? You're seriously offering to take me to Ohio?"

"It would appear so."

"Oh my gosh," Anna says. _Holy shit_. Who the hell is this girl, this mystery guardian angel seemingly dropped from the heavens right when Anna needed her? "I mean, well…yeah! Of course! I would love that!" She wrings her hands together. "I'll need to get my stuff from my hotel somehow, which…I don't really wanna see my fiancé again but I'll deal, I guess, and I can be ready to leave whenever you want. And I'll pay you, I promise. For gas and stuff."

Elsa scoffs, but it's not unkind. "There's no need for that."

"Well, fine, if you insist. I'll repay you in…good company! And good conversation."

Elsa's eyes are on her, searching, taking her in. Something about those blue, blue eyes makes Anna feel…exposed, vulnerable. She wonders for a moment if she's making a mistake. If there's anything she should have learned by now, it's that she _trusts_ too easily, lets down her guard too fast and lets people in and lets them hold her heart in their hands and do with it what they will.

But then Elsa smiles, and it's warm.


	2. driving circles around me

By the time they pull into the hotel parking lot, after an hour's drive from the wedding venue, Anna's so nervous she's bouncing in her seat. It's a nice place, the kind with his-and-hers sinks in the bathroom and four different restaurants in the lobby – and, most notably, the kind with a concierge who _definitely _saw Anna leave that morning and will _definitely _notice her sheepishly walking back in, alone, clad in her wedding dress. Suddenly, she's _scared_ – all the bravado of her dramatic exit has drained from her body, leaving only a stupid, nervous, terrified little girl.

"God, I don't think I can do this," Anna whispers. "This was – I mean, this was really dumb. I've done some dumb shit before, but – wow." She leans her head against the car window – the cold glass helps ease the thrumming in her head, at least, and she knows touching _anything _will make her feel more grounded than she does right now.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Elsa glance at her, then down at the steering wheel, then back to her again. Her fingers flex like she's about to reach for Anna, but then she hesitates and apparently decides to go with "I'm sure it'll be okay", instead, and Anna finds herself wishing she had a hand to hold or someone to squeeze her shoulder.

"What if everyone's already back?" she says, not even bothering to disguise the abject terror in her voice. "What if everyone's waiting for me in there? What am I gonna say?"

"I don't think I saw anyone following too close behind us," Elsa says.

"Yeah, but still."

"You're going to have to face them eventually, aren't you?" Elsa's voice is gentle, like she's talking to a skittish animal. "It might as well be now."

"No, it's – you don't understand. There's a lot…there. I – It's too much to explain right now."

Elsa hesitates. Anna gets the impression that she spends a lot of time thinking about what she wants to say and do, and how she's going to say and do it. _Maybe I'll learn something from her_, she thinks ruefully.

"Well, if you find yourself needing to explain it later," Elsa finally says, "we do have a long drive ahead of us. And I'm told I'm a good listener."

Anna smiles. "I think I'd like that." This stranger really, _really _doesn't owe her anything, but here she is, trying. It's something Anna hasn't realized she's missed – the simple act of someone visibly _trying _to be kind, putting in the effort to earn her trust or her friendship or whatever. Even if it's probably only for the sake of making a ten-hour drive more bearable and less awkward. She's found herself warming up to Elsa already, even as a small voice in her head says _don't do this again, don't go too fast, you always do this._

She grips the car door's handle until her knuckles blanch. "Here goes nothing." Her voice shakes, betraying the false bravado of her words, but Elsa is kind enough to not point it out. But then, right as she's about to step out of the car, Elsa says "wait, wait!", and she stops.

"Would it help if I…came in with you?" There's a beat of silence during which Anna just stares blankly at her. "…I could maybe…I don't know, stand guard? And warn you if your fiancé shows up?" The look on Elsa's face says she's already regretting saying anything. "Just an idea."

"Ooh!" Despite herself, Anna can't help but grin. "You can be my lookout!"

"If it would help you feel more comfortable."

"I guess," Anna says, but there's already a smile on her face, so she knows her hesitance isn't fooling anyone.

"You _guess _a lot."

"Okay, I _know_, I guess." Anna catches herself and groans. "Don't point that out. I know. And yes, I think I do want you to come."

Before Anna has a chance to drag herself and her dress out of her seat, Elsa's out of the car and by her side, holding the car door open for her like the world's most elegant chauffeur. A stark contrast to Anna, who stumbles out of the car and trips on her dress's hem before finally grabbing Elsa's shoulder to right herself.

"Alright then," Elsa says. "You ready to do this thing?"

She draws a shaky breath. "Ready as I'll ever be."

xxx

And that's how Anna finds herself crouched behind Elsa in a cramped stairwell, in her wedding dress, on her wedding day, at a Hilton somewhere outside of Boston.

"This feels like we're in a spy movie," she whispers loudly, eliciting a _shh! _from Elsa, who has the heavy fire door propped open a bit so she can watch the door to Anna's room. She lowers her voice and continues. "You're the spy here, of course. I'm the hapless civilian caught up in your plot through no fault of my own."

Elsa huffs and lets the door close, but she's hiding a smile. "And you're going to ruin my plot if you don't keep it down."

"You're taking this awful seriously for someone who didn't know me at all, like, a couple hours ago."

Elsa fixes her with a serious look. "If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right." She peeks up out of the grated sliver of glass on the door. "Oh, get down_, get down, _he's coming out," she whispers urgently.

"The door is closed, why are you whispering?"

"Quiet! These things are far from soundproof."

Anna fidgets with the lace on her dress. "Can you get a good look at him? How…mad does he look?"

There's a long pause during which Elsa diligently looks out the door's window. "He's – yelling, it looks like. Taking his luggage out. Tossing it around."

_Stupid, stupid, stupid_. Anna gives up on keeping her dress in good shape and slides down to sit on the floor of the stairwell. She puts her head in her hands and pushes the heels of her palms into her closed eyes until she sees stars on the backs of her eyelids. "Is it hot in here or is it just me?" she says thickly, past the quickly-rising lump in her throat.

"It's just you," Elsa mutters with a wry smile (and it _does _make Anna snort). Her voice is much closer to Anna's ear than it was before, and Anna looks up to see that she's in an awkward half-crouch near Anna, her hand extended but hovering just short of Anna's skin. She's doing that flexing thing she was doing before, in the car, like she wants to be closer but can't bring herself to breach the distance.

"You can touch me, you know," Anna says, quietly. Elsa looks taken aback – did that come off weird? Does she sound desperate? "Oh, no – that came out wrong. I just mean, if you wanted to. I mean, not in a weird way. Just, like, if you were thinking about it. It would be okay."

Then – a cool hand alights, first softly, hesitantly, on her shoulder, and then onto her back when Anna doesn't pull away from the contact. "I'm sorry," Elsa mutters. "I know this must be hard."

"It's just, like –" Anna starts, but has to stop to swallow, hard. "It was so easy to _do _it, I mean, I knew I had to do it, but every time I stop to actually think about it I just panic, you know? And I wonder if it was a mistake." She laughs, but it's humorless. "If there's one thing you'll learn about me it's that I don't really think before I do things."

"I understand," Elsa murmurs, now rubbing small, slow circles into Anna's back, on the fabric of her dress just below where it dips down to expose freckled skin. "You know, I knew a girl just like that, once."

Anna sniffs. "Really?"

"Yes. She was," Elsa chuckles, "a bit rash, to say the least. Stubborn. Impulsive. She – how did you put it? – didn't really think before she did things."

"And how did that turn out for her?"

Elsa is silent for a long moment before she says, "I can tell you that she was – she is very loved."

Anna opens her mouth, ready with a hundred more questions about this mystery girl, but before she can say anything Elsa stands abruptly and peers out the window.

"Oh," she says. "I think the coast is clear."

They creep gingerly out of the stairwell and into the well-lit hallway. The hotel room door is still in the process of swinging shut – just as well, too, because Anna's only just remembered she doesn't have any pockets and therefore no keycard on her – and she can still _see _Johnny retreating down the hallway, his suit jacket off and the back of his white shirt stained with sweat. She sprints across the hallway on her toes and sticks her hand in the doorjamb just as it's about to close, Elsa following close behind.

The room is…a disaster. The complimentary champagne bottle they'd gotten at check-in is lying in a tangle of broken glass on the floor; champagne drips off the wall above, where the bottle had apparently been smashed. Her luggage has all been emptied onto the bed, though nothing seems to be missing at first glance. The TV has been knocked off its stand. And there are scuff marks from shoes on the walls and the furniture.

"Wow," Elsa breathes from behind her. It startles Anna out of her reverie.

"Wow," she repeats. "He's never done anything like this before."

Elsa makes a sound like she doesn't believe her, but pretends to be examining her nails when Anna turns to look at her.

She really only needs one bag – half the clothes she brought were things Johnny bought her for the honeymoon, and she doesn't want to be weighed down when she makes her escape back down to the lobby. It feels like the room will explode if she moves or touches anything, though. After a minute or so of Anna just standing there looking around, Elsa clears her throat pointedly.

"Do you need help packing?" she says, like she's trying to do Anna the favor of pretending they're preparing for a vacation.

At length, Anna manages a quiet "no". It's only then that she's able to grab a bag – her backpack, containing her laptop, which she's sure is broken by now – and begin mindlessly tossing things in. A couple shirts, some jeans, underwear. A sundress, because why not. Toothbrush.

"What's this?" Elsa asks. She's holding a little stuffed penguin that was lying on the bed.

"Oh." Anna laughs and takes it from her, giving it a little squeeze in her arms. "That's Penguin. My big brother gave it to me when I was little and scared to go to sleepaway camp. I know it's dumb, but I still take it with me sometimes when I'm away from home."

"I don't think that's dumb." Elsa smiles. "Naming a penguin 'Penguin', on the other hand…"

"Hey!" Anna narrows her eyes at her playfully. "I was seven, gimme a break." She looks down at the toy, well-worn from years of love (and being cried into). "I actually kinda snuck him here with me. Johnny thought it was childish. Guess he found it while he was…ransacking the place."

"Your brother must love you very much," Elsa says quietly.

"Yeah." Anna smiles. "We used to be really close. We did everything together when I was younger. But he got really busy with work and stuff after college, so we haven't really seen other much in the last few years."

"You should bring the toy back with you," Elsa says, her voice suddenly taut, almost forceful.

"Oh, yeah, definitely. I can't do this without him," she says, only half-joking. Or, like, a quarter-joking, really. "Alright, I just need to change and then we can get going."

Elsa blanches and turns her back as soon as Anna's fingers start going for the zipper of her dress (she appreciates the politeness of the gesture, but really, they're both girls here). It takes a few seconds of twisting and struggling for her to say "um, Elsa? I'm so sorry. But I think I need a hand here."

"Oh. Um." Elsa approaches with her hands held defensively in front of her, fumbling with the zipper like she's doing her absolute best to touch as little skin she can. She pulls the zipper down rapidly and steps away like she's been burned. "Is that – is there any other help you need?"

"Oh, don't be so shy about it." She can't help but giggle at Elsa's reticence – the woman seems so stoic and collected and here she is stumbling over herself at the thought of, what, touching Anna? Weirding her out? "You're already taking me home. Might as well get your money's worth out of me."

Elsa makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh, but turns her back to Anna again as soon as she unceremoniously shimmies out of her dress.

"Jesus!" she says. "God, being in that thing was awful. Okay, what should I wear?"

"Something comfortable. You're about to be sitting for a while."

"Don't you wanna help me pick?" she teases. "Come look at what my options are."

Elsa huffs. "We don't have time for this. We should have been on the road half an hour ago."

"What about your luggage? Don't you need anything?"

"I already have it all."

"What, you were just chilling in a field with all your bags in your car, ready to take off at any moment?" Anna squeezes into a pair of skinny jeans (she deserves to feel good about herself right now, dammit!) and throws on her favorite powder-blue blouse. "You can look at me now, I'm decent."

Elsa turns around warily. "You're very comfortable around strangers."

"You're not a stranger anymore!"

Anna hoists her (now stuffed until the zippers strain) bag over shoulder and her casts one last, long look around the room. It's unbelievable, she thinks, that not even twenty-four hours ago she sat on that bed with Johnny, giddy – with nerves, yes, and certainly fear and regret and all that, but with _excitement_, too, and with joy. All things considered, it had been a nice final night with him. They'd ordered room-service ice cream, put on facemasks (Johnny too!), and tucked themselves under the covers with the TV turned to a scary movie. Now she stands in the wreckage of her decisions with only a backpack to her name.

(Well, and all the rest of her belongings that are safely back home.)

But it's too late now to dwell on what's already happened. _You've made your bed, Anna_, her dad would say. _Now lie in it. _

She steels herself, stands up straight and tries to set her jaw so she looks more confident than she feels. "Okay. Let's go."

xxx

"Oh, fuck," Anna says, punctuating ten minutes of silence and startling herself out of the nap she was about to doze off into.

Elsa jumps. "What is it?"

She groans. "Johnny still has my phone."

"Damn," Elsa says. "You should have said something. I could've gotten it for you."

Anna shoots her a quizzical look. "How?"

"I would have…figured something out."

Anna hangs her head in her hands. Everyone's going to be so worried about her, and – what if there's something on her phone Johnny sees that he doesn't like?

"Do you want to go back?" Elsa says.

"Wait, really?"

Elsa nods without a hint of mirth. She's completely serious, even though they've already driven out an hour from the hotel.

"No, that's okay. I don't wanna waste gas. And I don't want to worry about being back there again." She grins at Elsa. "But now I have nothing to do for, like, twelve hours, so get ready to talk to me!"

"I would love nothing more," Elsa says dryly.

Elsa's hands are steady on the steering wheel. Anna watches them – her long, slender fingers, deft and dexterous and completely in control. Elsa exudes _competence _– steely eyes fixed on the road ahead, eyebrows set in casual concentration - and Anna feels safe in her hands even despite all that she doesn't know about her.

"You know," Anna says, leaning her seat back until she's practically lying down, "you know a lot about me by now, but I don't know a single thing about you."

Elsa frowns. "I don't know anything about you."

"Sure you do."

"Like what?"

"You know I was getting married. You know I live in Ohio. You know I do dumb things."

At this, Elsa gives her a curiously tender smile. "I don't know about that last one."

"Well, in any case. I wanna get to know you a little better!" And it's true – everything she's seen of Elsa so far, from her willingness to participate in Anna's hotel heist to the kindness with which she's listened to Anna's many anxious ramblings to the fact that she's even doing her this massive favor in the first place – makes her want to _know _Elsa, to learn what's under that perfect porcelain skin. "What's your story?"

"What does that mean?"

"You know, like, who _are _you? What drives you? Where did you come from? Where did you go?"

"Wow. That's a lot of questions." To Anna's chagrin, Elsa doesn't pick up on her _perfectly _set up joke. "I work as an engineer and I'm from Cleveland. Is that a good enough start?"

"_Whoa_, an engineer? You must be super smart."

"Definitely not." Elsa smirks. "Just something I've always had a natural inclination towards, I suppose. I worked as an architect for a little while, too, when I was younger. Didn't really have enough math for me, though."

Anna rolls her eyes. "So humble."

"Yes, I'm known for my humility."

Her initial, kneejerk impression of Elsa, she realizes, hadn't been quite accurate. Elsa is oddly formal, sure, and the way she sits ramrod-straight in her seat and arranges her facial features in a practiced charade of poise kind of make it seem like she's, well, trying to…hide something? Or maybe just trying really hard to seem like she has her shit together. But she's also _funny_, and sarcastic, and clearly patient with Anna's frenetic brand of conversation.

Anna decides she likes Elsa.

"So how old are you?" she asks.

Elsa makes an exaggerated affronted face, placing hand on her chest like she's been mortally insulted. "Didn't anyone ever tell you you never ask a lady's age? Where are your manners?"

"Okay, drama queen, I was just wondering because you look _young_. It was a compliment."

"I assure you," Elsa says, "I'm a decent amount older than you."

"How old do you think I am, then?"

"Ummm." Elsa wrinkles her nose in thought. "Twenty…seven?"

Anna gasps. Twenty-_seven_?! "What the hell! I'm twenty-three!"

"Wait, really?" At this, Elsa looks genuinely alarmed. "Twenty-three is…a little young to be getting married, isn't it?" As soon as it leaves her mouth, she gasps. "No, I'm – I'm sorry. I don't mean to judge."

_It's true, though_, Anna thinks. How many of her friends had told her the wedding, settling down at this stage of her life, was a bad idea? Anna is not predisposed to regret – she's always been one to make her choices and then take the consequences, come what may – but lately all she's been thinking is that everyone else was _right_, and maybe if she had _listened _–

"Yeah," she finally says. "It is young to be getting married. But we were" – she stops herself – "I thought we were in love."

Next to her, Elsa looks out at the road with an expression Anna can't read. That seems to be a common thread with Elsa, not being able to read her.

Finally, Elsa breaks the silence with a simple "I'm sorry."

"That's okay," Anna says, and she means it. "I know it seems like a dumb choice now. Especially from where you're sitting."

"I've made my fair share of dumb choices myself. I don't purport to judge others'.

I-90 yawns before them, wide and vast. The sky is growing dark, clouds rumbling in the distance, coalescing and then breaking apart. Hopefully Elsa's good at driving in the rain.

"You can ask me another question, if you want," Elsa offers, to break the silence that has stretched between them.

Anna perks up immediately. "I just asked you one! Now it's your turn."

Elsa taps her chin like she's deep in thought. "Well, I can't think of anything I want to know about you."

"Hey!" Anna laughs. "You mean you aren't _dying _to find out what makes me tick?"

"You got me, I am," Elsa says, but her smile is genuine now. "What do you do?"

"I'm in grad school," Anna says eagerly. She loves talking about what she does. "Getting a masters' in education."

"You want to be a teacher?" Elsa asks, the end of her sentence turning up as if she's surprised at Anna's answer.

"Not exactly – I wanna work in higher education. You know, student affairs, helping college kids out, things like that. I had kind of a tough time in college, like, finding my place and figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do. So I wanna try to help kids…avoid that, I guess. I figure if I can use who I am and what I've been through to help other people then, like – everything will have been worth it, you know? That probably doesn't make sense." She blushes, tucks a lock of hair behind her ear self-consciously. "Sorry. I know I tend to ramble."

She looks over at Elsa, and there's that look again – that oddly tender smile. She knows Elsa probably means it to be kind – probably her best attempt at an expression of polite, noncommittal approval – but under the gaze of those blue, blue eyes and that small smile, Anna feels…exposed. She feels _seen_. She's not sure if she likes it.

But still, it's…different from the way Johnny looks at her. (_Looked_ at her, she reminds herself.) Even when they were at their best, Anna always felt like some sort of specimen when Johnny would fix his eyes on hers, like she was something bizarre and otherworldly to be studied and solved.

She's sure that look Elsa gives her is born of the same impulse: to examine, to learn. But if Johnny looked at her like a puzzle to be taken apart, she thinks, maybe Elsa looks at her like a puzzle to be put back together.


	3. opiate this hazy head

Anna wakes with a start to a sharp clap of thunder. The sky outside is impossibly dark, and for a minute she forgets where she even is, looking around blearily until her eyes alight on Elsa glancing at her from the driver's seat with a small smile on her face.

She wipes a line of drool from the corner of her mouth and wonders how long Elsa's been looking at her like that.

"Did you know you snore?"

Anna scoffs. "I do not. How long was I out?"

"Only about twenty minutes." Elsa frowns at her. "How are you feeling?"

"Like hot garbage." Her head is throbbing, her feet hurt from the heels she'd been in earlier that morning, and there's a tightness in her chest that seems like it keeps growing the further they get from Boston. Her fingers keep reaching for her pocket to check her phone, only to find it empty. And the way the clouds are coalescing and curling into each other in the distance makes her uneasy. But she forgoes telling Elsa any of this, choosing instead to address her pointed look of concern with, "I need a longer nap."

The sky ahead of them rumbles and flashes white with lightning, and a second later comes the gentle tap-tap-tap of rain on the windshield.

Anna smiles despite herself. "This is _perfect _brooding weather."

Elsa considers this for a moment, and says, "You don't quite strike me as someone who does a lot of brooding."

"Oh, really?" For some reason, the idea of _striking _Elsa as anything at all makes Anna feel a little giddy – like she's interesting enough to be thought about. "How come?"

"Well," Elsa says, in that measured, careful voice that makes it sound like she's weighing each of her words on her tongue before saying them, "brooding is what people turn to when they can't or won't do anything about what makes them unhappy. It's self-indulgent."

"I honestly can't tell if you're trying to compliment me right now."

The corner of Elsa's mouth quirks. It's a crooked smirk that takes Elsa's almost ethereal beauty and makes it seem more…human? "I'm saying that from what I've gathered from you so far, you're above brooding in the face of your problems."

Anna's mind keeps hopscotching over the actual conversation itself and landing on the way Elsa talks, the way her voice sounds (gravelly, husky, yet still undeniably feminine), her lips forming the words.

"Has anyone ever told you you speak in, like, paragraphs?" she says.

"Wow." Elsa snorts. "No, I can't say I've heard that one."

"Well, you kind of talk like you're reading from a…script or something in your head." It's cute, Anna thinks. It's like Elsa exists at the intersection of a Venn diagram where the circles are "painfully self-conscious" and "utter perfection", and the result is "kind of talks and holds herself like a nineteenth century courtier". (Anna's own personal Venn diagram is just one single circle that says "awkward"). "But it's not a bad thing! I kinda like it."

"You like it?"

"Yeah, I do," Anna says, and it earns her a smile. It's like she's collecting them. She wonders what else she can do to get Elsa to smile like that – it's tight-lipped, small, but Anna can tell it reaches her eyes. "You're really well-spoken."

There's another smile! She's getting good at this game.

The rain's lashing against the windshield in earnest now, turning the gentle pitter-patter into something that sounds more like coins being dropped on the car's roof. Elsa switches the wipers on with a frustrated _tsk_ and they click frenetically across the glass, but suddenly it's coming down hard enough that they can barely make out the rear lights of the cars ahead of them.

"Damn it," Elsa mutters. She turns to Anna with an apologetic look. "I'm sorry. If I'd known it was supposed to storm this hard I would have gotten us a hotel for the night."

"Not your fault," Anna says. She's always loved the rain, anyway – again, perfect brooding weather, and she used to love blaring Taylor Swift from her old car's shitty radio and looking dramatically out the window like she was in a music video. And her life has pretty much turned into a Taylor Swift song anyway, what with the last-minute-wedding-escape and all.

She lets her head fall against the window. Her breath comes out in a puff that fogs up the glass, and she uses her finger to draw a lazy smiley face in the haze. It's an old habit. She'd doodled so much on Johnny's shower door that whenever the glass fogged up you could see all the marks she'd left; she hadn't even really registered it as a habit of hers until one day when he pointed it out to her with a laugh and a _you're adorable_. _That_ was the Johnny she fell in love with, she thinks with a wince: the man who noticed things about her that she herself didn't, who knew her for all her awkward goofiness and liked her anyway. Not the stranger who had seemed to take his place before her eyes. It was like someone had swapped him out for a totally new person but had done it slowly, piece-by-piece, over years and years, until Anna rolled over in bed the night before their wedding and found herself looking at someone she didn't recognize.

(She knows that isn't true, and that the person he became must always have been in there somewhere, but still. It's a comforting fantasy.)

It hurts to think of him.

Of course it does, how could it not – for five years he was Anna's partner in crime and best friend and whatever else she'd written in her Instagram caption for her engagement pictures. Still, she had (perhaps foolishly) expected this to be a little easier. It was the best thing to do, right? It was the right move? So why do her thoughts keep drifting back to him every time she has a minute to herself?

Anna hates it, the not-knowing. The doubt. It's so unlike her. This whole thing has turned her into someone she isn't, and she hates it.

She realizes with a start that they've stopped moving. Hazard lights flash all around them, and they've come to a complete standstill amidst an ever-quickening torrent.

"What's happening?" she says. The rain is so loud she finds herself almost shouting.

Elsa gives her a tired sidelong glance. "We've stopped."

"Thanks, that clears it up."

"Don't be sarcastic," Elsa says haughtily. "I don't know why we're stopped. Probably there's an accident somewhere further up."

"God!" Anna groans and throws her head against her seat back (a bit dramatic, she'll admit), prompting a look of alarm from Elsa. "Sorry. Just, the longer we're on the road the more time I have to, you know, think."

"You wouldn't be thinking if we weren't on the road?"

"Wow, okay, who's being sarcastic now?"

"It's only fair."

"That's not how it works. You're obligated to be nice to me. I just ditched my own wedding."

Elsa laughs. It sounds like water flowing over stones in a creek. "You've got me there. I relent."

Traffic inches forward ahead of them. Elsa's a bit jerky on the brakes, and the stop-start-stop-start motion of the car makes Anna a little nauseous. But that could also just be a result of, well, everything else going on in her life, her anxious thoughts twisting and twisting into each other, starting first in her brain and then following gravity down her ribcage until they settle in a dense ball at the pit of her stomach. She wonders aimlessly how long it might take to get back to normal. Thank god she isn't alone for this – her heart seizes as she imagines trying to make the return trip home without anyone by her side distract her (and to aim her nervous word-vomit at).

The curtain of rain has thickened to the point where they can't see anything ahead besides raindrops pummeling the windshield and the faintest hint of hazard lights. Next to her, Elsa worries her bottom lip between her teeth and knits her eyebrows together. (They're darker than her hair, which is surprising to Anna. In her experience, girls who are _that _blonde have brows and lashes to match, but Elsa's are dark and full. Would it be rude, she thinks, to ask if that white-blonde hair is natural?)

"This," Elsa says, "is bad."

So they pull off the highway at the next exit sign they see, Elsa apologizing profusely about how she knows this will delay them for a little while but she just hates driving in the rain and she know it's ridiculous but rainstorms spook her and they'll cover a lot of ground as soon as the rain stops to make up for it. They duck into a McDonald's to stretch their legs and grab some food for the road – Elsa gets…apple slices, which Anna's seen on the menu for years but has never actually witnessed anyone get, because, um, what the hell? – and Elsa checks her phone and all the local news outlets are talking and tweeting about the awful storm that'll be battering the Northeast _all night_. Elsa tries to say, "it's fine, I'm sure it'll let up a bit soon and then we can get back on the road and just power through it," but Anna sees the way Elsa drums her fingers nervously on the countertop and puts her foot down.

"Let's just stay here for the night," she says, and the hint of relief she sees behind Elsa's impeccably cool eyes is almost as good as a smile.

She'd meant, like, Red Roof Inn, _maybe _Holiday Inn if they're feeling really fancy, but Elsa drives them into the lot of a building that's towering and unfamiliar to her, and then they walk into the lobby and _wow _she cannot afford this.

Elsa must see equal parts awe and horror written on her face, because she gives her an apologetic grimace and says, "I have a lot of travel points here, so don't worry about it. I'm sorry it's so ostentatious. My work always puts me up here."

"Oh, um, totally fine, no problem at all," Anna says. "Are you sure you wanna spend your points on _me_, though? I mean, it's gotta be a lot for, you know, all this."

"I travel a _lot_," Elsa says, and Anna wonders if she's imagining the sadness behind those words.

They carry their things up to their adjoining rooms, which are connected to each other by a door. Anna finds that comforting – it makes the room feel less lonely. Anna's about to invite Elsa into her room, ask her if she maybe wants to get dinner or drinks in the lobby or something, but Elsa swipes her keycard to her door fast, like she's trying to escape something, and leaves Anna with a terse "I'll see you in the morning".

And then she's alone.

xxx

Anna's bored.

Granted, she _does _get bored more easily than most people, but this would be too much for even her older brother, who had once gone on a days-long silent meditation for no reason (well, "to get in touch with himself" is what he'd said, but to her it kind of just sounded like sitting in an empty room for twenty-four hours a day). All she has with her to distract her from reality is the hotel TV that somehow only has six free channels, and with no phone or any way at all to get in contact with, well, _anyone_, she's just so _antsy _it's maddening.

It's 4:00 P.M., too early to go to bed but a little too late for a nap. She rolls around on her bed for a bit anyway. The mattress is spongy – she wonders aimlessly if it would be bouncy enough to jump on. Maybe later. She rifles through the Bible in the drawer of the bedside table, wondering if maybe now's the time to work on getting rid of the _lapsed _from her "lapsed Catholic" status, but then she accidentally rips out one of the tissue-paper-thin pages and hastily shoves it back where it came from, thinking she's never really been one for old stuffy texts anyway. She spends a bordering-on-creepy amount of time wondering what Elsa's up to in the adjoining room. Does she ever let her hair out of that braid? Anna wonders what it would look like down. It's weird to imagine the woman in any sort of state of relaxation. The seatback on the driver's seat in her car was set to stand so straight it made a literal 90-degree angle with the cushion.

She imagines Elsa sitting on her bed with that same ramrod-straight posture, mere feet away from Anna right through that door, with her TV set to something Elsa-like (CNN, probably, Anna decides) and her perfectly cool eyes fixed demurely on the screen. If Anna had to come up with one word to describe her impression of Elsa so far, it would be _polite_, but that's a word that describes how you are with _others, _not how you are by yourself. And yet it somehow seems like an oxymoron to imagine Elsa perfectly relaxed by herself.

Well, they've got a good amount of time left to spend together still. Maybe Anna can get Elsa to loosen the reins on some of that practiced perfection. She's always been good at getting people to let her in.

Anna looks at the clock.

4:20 P.M.

She groans. _God, _being by yourself sucks.

She's only just decided to haul herself off the bed and out of her room – maybe she'll explore the hotel, get a workout in, get some food or something – when she spots a shadow arrive in the space between her door and the floor.

The shadow remains where it is for a second, and then disappears, walks off somewhere to the left of her room. Then it comes back. Disappears again. Moves from side to side. Stands still again.

Anna watches the shadow sit under her door for a few more long seconds before her curiosity gets the better of her and she decides she _has _to see who or what is hovering so ominously and weirdly in front of her room. She wrenches open the door –

– and runs straight into Elsa's raised fist.

"Ow!" she says.

Elsa, for her part, looks terrified. "Anna! I'm so sorry."

"Were you waiting out here to ambush me with your fists?" Anna rubs her forehead where it'd impacted Elsa's knuckles, perhaps a bit dramatically.

"No, I –" She casts her eyes downward, looking sheepish. "I was about to knock."

"And you had to spend, like, an hour working up the courage?" Anna says. She immediately regrets it when, briefly, Elsa looks genuinely hurt. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean to – just, I could tell you were pacing out here. I saw from under my door."

Elsa blinks at her for a moment, then draws herself up, looking down her nose at Anna. She seems to become a totally different person so quickly – haughtier, regal. "I'm sorry. I'll leave you to your room." And she turns on her heel and walks away, somehow striding gracefully even though her room is just a few steps away.

"Wait, no!" Anna says. A couple stepping out of the elevator turns to glance at her, and she lowers her voice. "Don't go."

Elsa's already drawn her keycard, and stops just short of turning the doorknob to retreat into her room. She turns and fixes Anna with a look she hasn't seen from her before. It's cold, measured. Her eyes are the color of ice, sure, but now they glint at her where before they were warm and open.

"I was just thinking about coming to find you," Anna says.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I was bored out of my _mind_, so I thought I'd maybe stretch my legs, y'know, poke around the hotel and see if there's anything to do." She offers a placating smile, as if to say _sorry I was kind of a bitch _(and makes a mental note that Elsa's just a _tad _sensitive). "Figured since we're stuck here tonight we might as well have fun."

Blue eyes study her, Elsa's face an unreadable mask. Anna wishes she had the ability to read minds.

"Actually," Elsa says, "I was going to ask you if you wanted to join me for dinner."

"Oh!" Anna knows she sounds too excited, but she doesn't care. "Yes! Of course. I'd love to."

Elsa smiles. The mask falls away. "There's a restaurant in the lobby. Italian, which I don't really care for all that much, but it'll do."

"Lead the way!" She hooks her elbow around Elsa's upper arm before she can stop to think about whether that's okay to do to someone she's known for all of one (1) day, and Elsa stiffens, but oh well, it's too late now. They descend to the lobby arm-in-arm like a couple at a debutante ball (and Elsa'd fit right in at one). Anna's not sure if she's imagining it, but she _swears_ she can feel cold emanating through Elsa's sweater where the pores in the fabric are pressed against the Anna's bare skin. Isn't that a symptom of, like, anemia? It would definitely make sense considering how pale and fragile Elsa looks. Anna makes a mental note of it. At this point, there might as well be a little notepad in her brain dedicated specifically to the notes and puzzles about Elsa that she's picked up on in their few hours spent together.

When they get to the restaurant, Elsa gives her name to the host and he swiftly leads them to a secluded table, even though the place is packed and people are standing outside waiting. Elsa pulls Anna's chair out for her before sitting down herself, which both surprises Anna and makes her heart flutter a bit with how formal and practiced the gesture seems to be.

"Someone's studied their etiquette books," she says, and Elsa just smiles before furrowing her brow at the menu in front of her.

Anna already knows what she'll get: carbonara that she will inhale at a rate that shouldn't be humanly possible. Johnny always called her a little Hoover, smiling at the way she'd eat while also gently chiding her to please not do that in front of his family whenever they ate together.

Elsa, though, flips back and forth through the pages of her menu, chewing her lip and looking so lost in thought it's almost cute. Anna takes the moment as an opportunity to study Elsa further. She's always loved people watching, like when she would camp out in a Starbucks to study and could just spend hours looking at people going about their day in the coffee shop, conducting meetings and gossiping with friends and having awkward first dates. It's definitely a little creepy, but she always liked to think of it as a sort of…personal anthropological study.

And boy, is Elsa positively rich in material to study. She carries herself like she's glass, brittle and hard, the way she holds the menu so delicately with her long fingers like she could break something or fall apart herself. But, Anna knows, she also certainly has some softer edges, the ones that come out when she gives Anna _that _smile or when she (awkwardly, reluctantly, but nonetheless) offered to help Anna get her stuff from her and Johnny's hotel room.

She _really_ is beautiful. Dark, arched eyebrows and impossibly full lips; in college, Anna had been terrified of girls who looked like Elsa, except Elsa doesn't carry herself like someone who knows she's gorgeous. A lock of hair escapes from where it was tucked behind her ear and falls over her forehead. Anna resists the urge to reach across the table and push it back into place.

"Think I should indulge in a glass of wine?"

She doesn't realize she's in a bit of a reverie until Elsa stuns her out of it. "Wha - huh?"

Elsa studies her. "Everything okay?"

"Sorry. Yeah. Just, you know, tired. And…thinking."

"Oh," Elsa says. "Of course, your…wedding and everything. You must be exhausted."

"Well that's not what I was thinking about," Anna blurts out, and then giggles nervously when Elsa's curious look only grows more confused and she realizes how that must sound. What is wrong with her. "Definitely get a glass of wine. In fact, I'll join you. What are you getting?"

"I like reds. Perhaps a pinot noir."

"Ugh." Anna wrinkles her nose. "I'm more of a moscato girl myself."

Elsa chuckles. "Of course you are."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Fruity. Sweet. Bubbly."

Anna blushes in spite of herself. "You're teasing me!"

"Of course not." Elsa's eyes are wide, and she blinks unassumingly. "I'm being completely sincere. Is that not an accurate assessment of you?"

She _hmph_s, because it is. "Okay, well, what does your choice say about you, then? Dry and…goes well with steak?"

"Believe it or not, that's actually how I'm most frequently described."

_Dry _is certainly an apt description of Elsa's sense of humor, and Anna finds herself stifling a laugh. "Both those things?"

"I'm told I pair excellently with a medium rare flank."

They order their respective drinks and food, and Anna gets more and more inquisitive the more wine she has. Things she manages to learn about Elsa, even though it's like pulling teeth: her family is from a tiny principality near Norway, but she moved here when she was so young she doesn't remember her birthplace at all, and can't even recall the name of the country. Her parents are dead, which she tells Anna with all the nonchalance of someone discussing the weather. She has a PhD in something that goes way over Anna's head. She has a little sister, but clams up immediately after mentioning her and refuses to say anything more, so _that _must be a sore spot. And the reason she's in New England, doing things like reading in her car at some random field that doubles as a wedding venue?

"I was feeling a bit listless." Elsa downs the rest of her second glass. "I've either been stuck in the same place for too long, or traveling for work with no time for myself. I wanted do something different."

There's something darker hidden behind that answer. Anna can tell by the way Elsa says it, like she's reciting something she's said before. But she leaves it for now, because Elsa's loosening up with the wine and Anna's genuinely having fun talking to her. She doesn't want to scare her off by being invasive.

"And look where it got you," Anna says, swilling her moscato in her glass. "Making new friends!"

"Friend, singular."

"Ah, so you admit I'm a friend now. Are you gonna finish your pasta?"

Elsa's food sits practically untouched on her plate. "You're welcome to it, if you want."

"You eat like a bird," Anna says, twirling noodles onto her fork and stuffing them unceremoniously into her face. "Ew! Are these _zucchini _noodles?"

"Didn't you hear me order?"

"I wasn't paying attention," Anna mumbles through a mouthful of gross fake lying vegetable pasta. "I guess I should have expected it after you ordered _apples _at_ McDonald's_."

Elsa rolls her eyes. "I have a vested interest in not getting scurvy."

By the time they're done eating (or, rather, by the time _Anna's _done eating), Anna is three glasses of wine in and feeling _great_. Her first tell for when she's getting drunk is that her cheeks start to get numb and her ears get hot, but right now all she feels is a comfortable tingling warmth settling on her skin, and a haze that threatens to drag her eyelids closed. The smart thing to do would be to go to her room and go to bed, even though it's literally not even 6 o'clock because Jesus, Elsa eats dinner at old people time for some reason. The _Anna_ thing to do would be to head to the bar. And that's exactly what she invites Elsa to go do, after the waiter drops off one check and she giggles and awkwardly tries to tell him that no they're not _together_ but then Elsa grabs it and pays for them both anyway.

"I really shouldn't," Elsa says. "I have to drive tomorrow. And it might rain again."

"Oh, come _on._" She sticks out her bottom lip in her best impression of a pout, hoping it translates as cute and enticing. "We can leave late tomorrow. I'm not in a rush."

"What if _I'm _in a rush?"

"Well, you've already volunteered to go out of your way to ferry a stranger home, so that's moot."

In the end, they end up at the crowded bar, crammed into adjacent stools with an inch of space between their arms, which Elsa very conspicuously maintains by holding her hands as close to her own body as she possibly can. Anna nurses a vodka cranberry (yes, a vodka cran is still her drink of choice, so what?), while Elsa gingerly sips on a gin and tonic. Little bubbles of condensation form around Elsa's fingers where they grip her glass, and Anna watches them as they roll down the sides and pool on the bar surface.

She stirs her own drink with her tiny straw. Her ears are hot, now, and her mouth is numb, but she can't find it in herself to care. Doesn't she deserve it after the day she's had?

"You know," Anna says thoughtfully, swallowing a hiccup, "you could honestly be a model."

Elsa chokes on her drink. "Why do you say that?"

"Are you _serious_? You ever looked in a mirror?"

Elsa just blushes and stares into her drink with a smile that's so tiny anyone who wasn't paying close attention would have missed it. (Anna, however, is definitely paying attention.) "You're drunk already."

"Am _not._"

"Your face is red."

To prove it, Elsa brandishes her phone like a weapon, takes a clumsy picture (with the flash on, even though the bar lighting is perfectly fine), and slides her phone across the counter to Anna.

"All I can see here is how hot I am." Her hair is (sexily) tousled from anxiously running her hands through it for hours, her eyes still a bit red-rimmed from crying briefly in the restaurant bathroom earlier, and, yes, her cheeks are flushed and pink. At least she wears the "broken engagement" look well. "Honestly, I've never looked better. Maybe I can find someone in this bar to help take my mind off things." She gives Elsa an exaggerated wink, but Elsa just gapes at her, looking genuinely appalled.

"Wait, _really_?" Elsa hisses. "I mean, I don't want to tell you what to do, but –"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding! God." She laughs, but it's tight – she is a _little _annoyed with Elsa for being so quick to assume she was being serious, for being so ready to start lecturing. "Not that I have a track record of making great decisions, as far as you know, but jeez."

Elsa raises her hands in a gesture of surrender, her eyes searching Anna's face for – something, but Anna's not quite sure what. "You're right. I'm sorry."

They sit in silence for a minute. Anna dips her head to drain the last, watered-down dregs of her drink, and she's suddenly acutely aware of Elsa's eyes on her. She's noticed a lot of that – long, roving glances in her direction when Elsa thinks she's not looking, like when you're walking toward someone you _think _you recognize and you're trying to scrutinize their face for familiar signs without being too weird about it. Either Elsa can't tell how obvious she's being or she just doesn't care, but bizarrely, Anna finds herself not really minding the attention. She figures it's not staring of the _creepy_ variety: Elsa's _way _out of her league anyway, and she could probably get literally anyone she wanted with just a flip of her hair and a come-hither look, with no need for longing gazes.

Even though some of the gazes have maybe probably definitely been of the _longing _variety.

Anna can't imagine someone as dignified and aloof as Elsa being the flirty type anyway.

"So, what, um," Elsa starts, and then stops to clear her throat and fold her hands on her lap, which she then stares resolutely down at. "If I may ask – what happened, exactly? With your…fiancé? If you're comfortable saying. You can be vague. Actually, I'm sorry, forget I asked –"

"No, no, it's okay." And it is, actually. It still doesn't feel real, and maybe talking about it will help it seem more like something that actually happened and less like a weird fever dream you'd have after taking too much Nyquil. "God, I don't even know where to start, though. It's a long story."

Elsa smiles encouragingly. Her eyes are like ice but somehow still kind, warm, the kind of cold that's like an ice cream cone on a hot day.

"It's a _really _long story."

"We have all night."

So she tells Elsa everything. She's well and truly drunk, now, and once she starts talking it feels so good she doesn't want to stop. She tells her how they met her senior year of high school, when Johnny transferred in from California and was assigned to be her lab partner in AP Biology. How he was so immediately enamored with her, how he charmed her with flowers and jewelry and words that were way too smooth to be coming out of the mouth of a high school boy and made her feel important. How she'd never been that pretty (Elsa scoffs at this), but Johnny always looked at her like she was. How she gave up a scholarship to a school far away to be able to go to college with him, how they moved in together after their freshman year and things were so good until they just…weren't.

"I don't really know what happened, though," she says, blinking back tears she hadn't realized were there. "I don't know what went wrong."

"What made you decide to leave?" Elsa says gently.

"It wasn't much of a decision, exactly. I think things just built up and I kept ignoring them until there was nothing else left for me to do. Just sucks that that moment didn't come until I was literally standing at the altar." She looks up from the bottom of her now-empty glass to glance nervously at Elsa, hoping she isn't judging her for being so noncommittal and flaky. "Do you know what I mean? Like there's just so many little things you almost don't notice until one day you're like, shit. And then it's so obvious."

Elsa swirls her drink around in a slow circle, the ice cubes clinking inside. "I know exactly what you mean."

"I just wish I knew why he _changed_," Anna says, the words coming out faster now, slurred from the alcohol but all the more honest for it. Suddenly it's like she _has _to say it all now or she'll never be able to. "Everything changed so fast, and I spent, like, this whole year turning it over and over in my mind trying to figure it out, if I could have done something different. If I…did something, or disappointed him, or…I don't know. It sounds stupid saying it out loud."

For a long moment, Elsa is quiet, stirring her drink and staring at her knuckles with a furrowed brow. When she finally speaks, her voice is quiet, but strained, her words tensing around the edges like she's holding something back. "It's not your fault."

"You don't know that," Anna says, but she wants to let herself be convinced.

Silence, and then again, simply: "It's not your fault."

Anna just sighs. "I think I need another drink."

"Let me get you something," Elsa says. She leans forward and mutters something to the bartender, too softly for Anna to hear. After a few quick flourishes of _several_ of the liquor bottles sitting behind the bar, the bartender hands Elsa a glass of something amber with a cherry and an orange slice sitting on top.

She sniffs it suspiciously while Elsa watches with poorly-disguised anticipation, made clear by the way she drums her fingers on the countertop.

"Try it," Elsa says. "You'll like it, I promise."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do. Don't you trust me?"

"No," Anna lies, "You're a stranger." But she brings the glass up to her lips regardless, and – "Whoa! This is delicious!"

"You like it?" Elsa looks genuinely delighted, bringing a hand up to her mouth to hide her grin. "See? What did I tell you?"

"How'd you know?!" she says.

Elsa just winks at her, which looks _so _wrong coming from Elsa's regal features and rigid politeness that it makes Anna giggle, and for just a moment, Johnny is forgotten.

xxx

"Not drunk," Anna says, as they stumble out of the elevator several hours and drinks later.

"Fine, then. If you're so confident, you can make the rest of the walk on your own." Elsa withdraws her arm from where it'd been supporting Anna's weight, helping her walk, and Anna immediately sways, totters a few steps forward, and trips only to be caught by Elsa again. The action feels oddly familiar. "Still think you're not drunk?"

Her body is hot and flushed but also somehow pleasantly numb, and the feeling of Elsa's hands on her – one on the small of her back, the other bracing her hip, withdrawn as soon as Anna's safely back on her feet – makes her want to fall again just to bring back the pressure of cool hands pressed against her. For now, she settles for leaning back a little into the arm that's returned to circling her shoulders. Maybe she could get away with wrapping her own arms around Elsa, ostensibly to support herself - ? But when she tries bracing a hand against Elsa's back, Elsa stiffens away from it, and Anna jerks her hand away. She might be just a _little _creepy, sneaking glances at flushed cheeks and slightly parted lips when she can, but she's not _that _creepy.

Anna's head is hazy, and pounding with the beginnings of a headache already, but even in her state (or maybe because of it) she can recognize two things. The first is that she already misses Johnny less, and the way things had been in the last few months between them, it was almost like they're already had a prolonged breakup and she'd already mourned the relationship in her mind. The second is that Elsa's hot. Objectively. Not just in her opinion, although she likes to think she has great taste, but – the woman has perfect porcelain skin and giant doe eyes the color of the sea, so is Anna really to blame for noticing what's _right _there? And, looks aside, she feels the strangest _pull _to Elsa, a magnetism, a humming electric field that draws her in. She doesn't know the woman at all, and still she feels – knows – that she can trust her. It's…weird. She's never felt anything like it before.

Or she's just an idiot who's making crazy things up because she's excited that a pretty stranger is paying attention to her.

It's probably the latter.

"We're here," Elsa says.

"We're where?"

"Your…room?"

"Oh. Sorry. Forgot." She disentangles herself from Elsa and falls against the door, swiping her keycard, two, three, four times before it finally takes. Elsa watches with a bemused frown. "Wanna come in?"

"Anna, no, it's late and I should really – "

"Please..?" She draws the word out and juts out her lip in what she hopes translates as an adorable, tempting pout. "For me?"

Elsa huffs. "God, you are drunk. Fine. I'll come in for a_ few minutes_, no longer. I need sleep so I don't kill us both tomorrow."

"Morbid," Anna slurs. She grabs Elsa's hand, waits a beat to gauge Elsa's reaction to the contact, and when she senses no protest, she drags Elsa into the room and kicks the door shut behind her. "What should we do?"

"_You _invited _me _in, what do you want to do?"

Anna belly-flops onto the bed and pats the spot next to her, with increasing aggressiveness until Elsa finally sits, carefully, next to her. The bed's so warm, and suddenly her limbs are lead and she wants nothing more than to fall asleep right there with Elsa watching over her. She feels safe under her gaze, even though currently she's doing nothing other than eyeing Anna warily like a bomb that could go off at any moment.

"'m tired."

"Then you should go to bed."

"Will you stay here if I do?"

"What?" Elsa's squinting down at her, puzzled. "Why would you want me to?"

"I dunno," Anna says. "I don't wanna be alone."

Elsa's hand is right next to her, fisted loosely in the sheets but looking warm and inviting regardless. Anna shifts so her head rests on it, and Elsa tenses for the briefest of moments before flattening out her hand so her skin rests flush against Anna's cheek. It's cold and perfectly smooth, like marble, and it feels good against Anna's hot, drunken flush. (She hopes she doesn't fall asleep and drool on it.)

"You've had a long day," Elsa murmurs. Her voice is so different without the acerbic edge it has when she's teasing or being sarcastic. "You deserve a good night's rest."

"Yeah," she sighs, scooting closer. Maybe if she does it slowly enough, gradually enough, Elsa won't notice and Anna can fall asleep pressed against the lines of her legs where they stretch out over the bedspread.

Distantly, she thinks, it's been three years since she last slept alone, so she hopes Elsa will allow her this. Head swimming with alcohol, hovering in the space between sleep and consciousness, too tired to care about personal space, she thinks: this is nice.

xxx

When she wakes, light is filtering in through the crack between the curtains, beating harsh and bright like the tide against the shores of Anna's hangover. Her mouth feels and tastes like a porcupine crawled into it and died in there, and her head's pulsing so hard it makes her nauseous. Panic flashes in her ribs when she remembers how drunk she'd been – did she say anything weird? Embarrass herself and scare Elsa away?

She doesn't remember pulling the comforter over her or taking off her jewelry, which is laid neatly on the bedside table next to her, along with a full glass of water and two Advil tablets. The angry red display on the ancient clock reads 6:00 AM; thank _God_, because she's in _no _mood to be awake and functional anytime soon and wants nothing more than to cover herself with the blankets and pass out until the burn of vodka stops periodically rising up in her throat.

Someone lets out a quiet snore; for a moment, Anna can't remember if there's supposed to be anyone else in the room and looks around wildly and – _oh_. It's just Elsa, curled into herself on the stiff chair in the corner of the room, her head lolling onto the armrest at an angle that can't be comfortable. Her mouth is open in a tiny "o". In the morning light, the edges of her hair lit with golden filigree, she looks so peaceful and perfect, like an angel or something out of a Renaissance painting or a statue chiseled perfectly out of stone.

The sight makes Anna's heart constrict bizarrely.

She's perfectly content to just lie there admiring Elsa until she falls asleep until, oh, God, speaking of constrictions – her stomach spasms and she tastes alcohol coming back up again and then she's scrambling out of bed and it's all she can do to keep from throwing up before she gets to the bathroom.

God. Now she remembers why she stopped drinking so much after college.

When she finally stumbles out of the bathroom and collapses in bed, Elsa has one eye open and is glancing groggily about the room, squinting against the glare of the light.

"Good morning," Anna says.

"Are you alright?" Elsa says, her voice husky and low from sleep. "I put out water for you if you're thirsty."

"I'm good." She'd figured it was Elsa who did that, but it makes her smile all the same to hear it from her. "Just need to sleep for another ten hours."

Elsa hums and closes her eyes again, putting her head back against the armrest.

"Hey," Anna says, "you know you can come join me on the bed if you want. You don't have to sleep on the couch."

"Thank you, but I prefer sleeping like this."

"Suit yourself, weirdo," she says, savoring the sound of Elsa's laugh as she turns her back to the window and shuts her eyes.

The sunlight coming through the window is hot against her back, and her face is sticky with dried sweat and makeup she never took off, but she falls asleep thinking of how cool Elsa's skin had felt under her cheek.


	4. there's nothing like this

Anna dreams of Elsa.

It's the sort of dream that makes perfect sense when you're in it, that feels like the most idyllic day you can remember from your childhood, warm and perfect and right in a way that reality can't possibly match. She dreams of Elsa smiling, Elsa covering her mouth to hide a giggle, Elsa sprawled out on a massive bed with none of the tension Anna's seen her carry in their time together. There's no plot to the dream, no context for time and place that would allow Anna to make more sense of it, just a series of images that Anna would like to emblazon in her mind and look at forever: slipping her fingers between Elsa's, gathering her up in her arms and kissing the frown lines off her forehead, whispering nothings in her ear.

When she wakes, she's hot and thirsty and her skin's sticking to the sheets, but she finds herself wanting to stay in bed longer just to try to blur the line between her dreams and the morning. But as soon as she opens her eyes, the dream's gone and that feeling of _rightness _ebbs away as suddenly as it came, and then all that's left for Anna to feel is…weird. Weird that it's barely been twenty-four hours since she last _kissed _Johnny; weird that it hasn't been twenty-four hours since she met Elsa, and already the woman's occupying so much of her mind.

It takes her a moment to realize she's alone. A note on the nightstand reads, in small, neat handwriting: _Went down to breakfast. Will get you something to eat. In no rush to leave – knock on my door when you're ready._

Anna folds the note up into a tiny square and tucks it into the pocket of the jeans she's still wearing from yesterday – she's not sure where the impulse to keep it is born from, but the idea of crumpling it up and throwing it away is somehow untenable. Looking at the handwriting gives her the same uncomfortable feeling she has when she thinks about her dream: a heady, saccharine desire that makes the tips of her fingers tingle, tempered with guilt and uncertainty and seriously, _what _is going _on_ with her?

It's fine. She's in a weird headspace. It's normal. It's part of the classic Five Stages of Grief About Running Away From Your Own Wedding: denial, anger, bargaining, lusting after a complete and total stranger, and acceptance. Right?

She brushes her teeth, takes a quick shower, puts on _just _enough makeup that it looks effortless, and knocks on Elsa's door right as the clock on her nightstand flashes 12:00 P.M., resolutely ignoring the knot of worry in her stomach as she waits for Elsa to answer.

"Good morning," Elsa says when she opens the door, looking radiant (of _course_). "Or, rather, good afternoon."

"Hey, I needed my beauty sleep, okay?" Anna mutters. "When did _you _get up?"

"Around seven. You can come in, you know."

"Oh! Okay." She takes a step closer, closing the foot-long gap she'd left between herself and the threshold so as not to seem presumptuous. "Did you end up getting me anything from breakfast?"

Elsa rolls her eyes. "Getting straight to the point, I see." She hands Anna something in a brown paper bag. "But yes, of course I did. I wasn't sure what you'd want, so I took an…educated guess."

Anna tears open the bag to find – "A chocolate muffin! Chocolate's my favorite, how'd you know?"

"I thought I remembered you saying something about it earlier." Elsa's self-satisfied grin is small, but it reaches her eyes.

"You have a really pretty smile," Anna says, before she can stop herself, and then when Elsa's eyes widen in surprise, she realizes she actually said that out _loud_, and for some reason it feels like something she maybe shouldn't have said even though it's obviously not a _bad _thing. "Um. Sorry, I – I was just thinking out loud. I meant that in, like, a nice way. Not in a weird way."

Elsa smiles again, but covers her mouth this time, like she's trying not to laugh. "I didn't think it was a weird thing to say."

"O-oh. Okay. Good." Jesus Christ. One incredibly tame dream was all it took to turn her into a nervous, blabbering wreck? (Not that she isn't always a nervous, blabbering wreck, but – even _more _so, if that's possible.) It occurs to her that it's going to be a _long _drive back if this is what she'll be like for the rest of the trip. "When do you wanna hit the road?"

"Up to you. When are you expected to be back? We can leave now and get there by 10 or 11 tonight if you'd like."

"Oh god, you'd really be okay with just driving ten hours straight like that?" she mumbles through a mouthful of muffin. It's delicious.

"Well, I figured you would want to get home as soon as possible," Elsa says. "But we can split the drive up over an extra day, if you're alright with that. It would certainly be easier for me."

"Yeah, let's do that." She takes another valiantly massive bite. "To be honest, I'm not really…super looking forward to getting back."

"Really? Why's that?"

Anna sighs. "I guess it just…it'll be so much more real once I'm home, you know? Like, right now it kind of feels like I'm in, like, my own little bubble. Like this isn't really reality." She draws in a shaky breath. "But once I go home, and I see everyone I know and I have to explain everything and move on with my life…that'll make everything more real."

"I understand." Elsa sits down on the edge of her bed and pats the spot next to her, and Anna joins. "You know…I'm not expected back at work for another week or so, so really, we can drag this on as long as you want."

Anna stares out the window that faces the bed. The view's bleak, typical suburbia, like every other affluent little town she's ever stopped in on a road trip – from their floor, high up, she sees rows of fancy office buildings, chain restaurants in clean brick buildings, traffic littering the streets. It reminds her of family vacations years ago, stopping at hotels and rest stops that all seemed the same, constants that were always so soothing in their familiarity.

They sit in contemplative silence for what feels like a long while, Anna lost in her head and Elsa thinking about god-knows-what, probably bored but not saying anything regardless.

"You know what we should do?" Anna finally says.

"What's that?"

"Take a really roundabout route through a cool city or two and be tourists for a few days." Anna laughs; she's kidding, of course, she's not gonna strong-arm Elsa into roadtripping across the East Coast with her for no reason other than to avoid her own troubles, but she'd be lying if she said the idea wasn't a _little _tempting.

"Okay," Elsa says.

It's the _way_ Elsa says it, so serious and dry, like she's actually considering it, that makes Anna giggle again. It's nice to pretend, for a minute, that they might actually do it. But then Elsa turns to look her, fixes her ice-blue eyes on Anna's, and there isn't a hint of mirth on her face, and Anna sobers.

"Wait, what?" Anna says. "I was just kidding, you aren't actually – "

"No, we should do it," Elsa says, conviction building in her voice as she speaks, like she's convincing herself as much as Anna. "Would you really want to?"

"I – " she starts, ready to say _uh, no, of course not, I can't just be cavorting around America with randoms_, but the thrill that goes up her spine at the idea is undeniable, so what actually comes of her mouth is "Yes."

Elsa smiles. "Okay."

"Okay," she says, fighting to keep her own smile at a level matching Elsa's and not the wide goofy grin that's threatening to make its way onto her face. This is _crazy_, this is _ridiculous_, but – who is she if not someone who's always up for something crazy?

They leave at a quarter past one. The rain must have stopped early that same morning, because the pavement shines with water and the sky's blanketed with clouds through which the sun blares harsh and white like a tubelight. Anna holds her hand up to shield her eyes as they traipse through the parking lot to Elsa's car, and Elsa wordlessly takes her sunglasses out of her hair and slides them onto Anna's nose.

She wonders how her parents are doing, if they know what's happened, if they're worrying about her. Johnny had warned her that his family would be expecting a _lot _out of her as a daughter-in-law, so she'd told her parents not to worry too much if she got preoccupied with wedding stuff and forgot to text them back. Hopefully, word of what happened hasn't reached them yet, although she doesn't see why it would have; Johnny's family and her own aren't necessarily on the _best _of terms. She envisions them sitting in blissful ignorance on the porch of their small, squat ranch home, and when she shows up in a few days she'll tell them everything and cry into her mom's shoulder and it'll all be okay.

Won't it?

They get in the car and Elsa reaches over Anna's lap to open the passenger-side glovebox. She pulls out an old, wrinkled map, and Anna rolls her eyes.

"A map, seriously? Don't you have a phone?"

"It's easier this way," Elsa mutters, a tiny wrinkle forming between her eyebrows as she unfolds the map and squints at it.

"You are _such _an interesting person."

"That sounds like a polite way of saying I'm weird."

"You're like a baby boomer trapped in a young person's body," Anna laughs, but Elsa just shakes her head and spreads the map out on the center console so they can both see.

"This is the highway we're taking," she says. Anna's eyes follow her finger as it traces a route from the coast to the Midwest. "So you can see what cities we'll hit on the way. Up to you where we stop."

She thinks of trips taken with her family, of printed Mapquest directions and terrible gas station coffee, and points wordlessly to a dot just a bit north of their chosen highway. It's an incredibly cliché place for a sightseeing pit-stop, and it _definitely _exposes her very Midwestern, never-taken-a-vacation-more-than-five-hours-from-home roots – she half expects Elsa to roll her eyes and say _no way_, because she seems like a person who's seen so much more of the world.

Her choice is – it's _pedestrian_, as Johnny might have called it, but Elsa just gives her a warm look and asks, "Niagara?"

"Yeah," she says, "my family used to go there, like, every other summer."

Elsa scrutinizes the map with an unreadable smile, folds it neatly and places it back in the glovebox, and then they're on their way.

xxx

Once they're on the road, there's really nothing else to do other than talk to each other. And so they talk.

"I should probably warn you," Anna says, "I fall asleep in moving cars pretty much immediately."

"So I've noticed."

"…yeah. So, uh, sorry if I doze off on you and you get bored or something. I'll try to stay up as long as I can, though."

"Sleep as much as you need. I'll be fine."

"You sure? I'd go crazy if I didn't have someone to talk to for that long."

"Oh, don't worry about me. I can keep myself entertained."

"With what?"

"My thoughts."

"Wow, okay, dramatic."

"What? It's true, I have a lot to think about!"

"Like what?"

"That's for me to know," Elsa says dryly.

"And for me to find out?"

"I should hope not."

"You're a real closed book, huh?"

"Maybe it's you that's a little _too _open."

"I'll give you that. I definitely share too much. Can't help it, though." Anna pulls a lever so her seat extends back and curls up in the blanket Elsa got her from the trunk. "I'd rather be an open book and risk, like, getting hurt or whatever than not take the chance at all."

Elsa responds with a noncommittal hum.

"Wouldn't you?" Anna prods (maybe unwisely, she realizes).

"No," Elsa says, all too quickly.

"Really?"

"Not worth the risk."

"The risk of, what, someone else hurting you?" Anna knows that all too well, but still, she doesn't regret _anything_. Not really. She's done some stupid shit in her life, but, well – that's life, isn't it?

Elsa just frowns out at the windshield, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and clenching her teeth so that Anna can see a muscle pop out in her jaw, which makes her feel…weird.

Finally, she says, "I'm not afraid of getting hurt."

Okay. Cryptic. Anna's starting to think Elsa really likes speaking in riddles just for the hell of it. She doesn't prompt Elsa any further, just waits, because the way her jaw is working makes it clear there's something else she's trying to get out.

It's a nice day out. Way nicer than yesterday. The sun's actually _fully _out, shining golden and warm down through the windshield, not expelling that weird white light she saw that morning. Of course, the trade-off of the sunlight is that it illuminates Elsa to the point that she looks ridiculously, insultingly ethereal. Like, it's genuinely unfair that the woman looks like an _angel _right now, glowing mere inches away from Anna.

"I'm – not scared of someone hurting me," Elsa says again, like it's a great effort to get the words out. She stops again, though, and Anna wonders if she wants _her _to ask for more information.

"Then why be so closed off?" she finds herself saying.

"I'm scared of – " Elsa says, and stops herself again, visibly rearranging her features so she's got that cool, collected air again. "People I'm close to – they get hurt."

"Hurt how?"

"I hurt them. It's – I hurt – people I care about. So it's better I just – never mind. I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"You can tell me anything," Anna says, and she means it.

Elsa snorts. "No, I can't. I just met you."

"So?"

"So I don't know you well enough to trust you yet."

For some reason, hearing that stings, because for what it's worth, _Anna _trusts Elsa. That's not really saying much, but – still. She can't explain it, but she wants Elsa to trust her too. Something tells her it's only natural that she should.

She wants to tell her this, wants to say _You can trust me, you won't hurt me_, and once again there's a thought that comes to her unbidden, that she can't trace the source of.

Elsa makes her feel unmoored. A ship without an anchor. Those eyes seem to sink into the soil of her being and dig out the roots until she's left just floating in space.

What she says, instead of all that Anna-esque word vomit, is "I have a feeling about you."

This earns her a bewildered glance from Elsa. "A…feeling?"

"Yeah!" She reclines her seat further and closes her eyes. She's sleepy, and maybe that's why she's feeling so suddenly forthcoming. "You know how there's some people you meet and it's like you've known them your whole life?"

"No."

"Or, like, they're someone you were supposed to meet and all your life you've just been waiting for them?"

"That's never happened to me," Elsa says. "How often are you coming across strangers you were destined to meet?"

"Okay, honestly, never. But I feel like I've read about it enough that I know when it's happening."

At that, Elsa laughs, and Anna bristles – she was being _serious._ "I'll take your word for it."

"Hmph." Anna shifts so she's lying in her seat, but facing Elsa. "So you don't believe in, like, fate and stuff?"

"You know, I'm not really sure," Elsa says. "At this point in my life I think I've become a bit of a cynic."

"_At this point in your life_," Anna parrots. "You say that like you're not basically my age."

Elsa shoots her a Look. "I'm older than you think."

She waits expectantly. A normal person would follow that up by saying "I am, in fact, x years old", but she's quickly learning that she shouldn't expect Elsa to behave like a normal person. An _Elsa_-like person would make a cryptic, mysterious statement that's practically begging to be questioned further, and then shut down when _actually _questioned.

Maybe she should experiment and test her hypothesis, Anna decides. So she asks, innocently, "How old are you, exactly?"

"Old enough," Elsa says, keeping her eyes fixed resolutely on the road.

There it is – she was right! It's a hollow victory, though, because…what'll it take to get Elsa to just give her a straight answer about something?

"You're so mysterious," Anna grumbles, pulling the blanket over her head and closing her eyes. She's had enough of riddles for now. "You're like a puzzle."

"Well, why don't you try and solve me, then?"

_That…_sounds a lot like flirting, and it makes Anna smile even though she knows it's probably not. "Maybe I will."

The last thing she hears before she falls asleep is Elsa stifling a giggle before saying "Good luck".

xxx

She's only able to nap for about an hour, but she stays laying there, still and silent, for much longer. When she first cracks her eyes open she catches a glimpse of Elsa existing as she does when she doesn't think she's being watched, and the sight is – well, it makes Anna's breath catch in her throat, really. It reminds her of the dream she had. It puts that same warm feeling in her stomach, like…nostalgia or longing or something like that.

It's a good feeling, albeit one that leaves her with…a lot of thinking to do.

Anna lies there with her eyes just barely cracked open for a _long _while, just staring and thinking. It's only when she tries unsuccessfully to stop a sneeze that Elsa looks over at her and says, "You know I can tell you're awake, right?"

"Huh?" She fakes a long, exaggerated yawn and stretches her arms above her head. "What are you talking about?"

"Anna, seriously. You snore and talk in your sleep. It's very obvious when you wake up."

"No, I swear, I've been asleep this whole – " Wait. Shit. "…I talk in my sleep?"

"Yes. At least, you have been around me." Elsa smirks. "Why? Worried about what you've said?"

"No," she mumbles, but her cheeks burn red. She's already had _one _dream about Elsa, who's to say she isn't babbling on in her sleep about what she really thinks of the woman? "…What did I say?"

"Something about macaroni."

"Hm." She chews nervously on her bottom lip, not sure if she really believes Elsa. "Are you sure that was it?"

Elsa seems to notice her anxious fidgeting, because she looks over and says, hurriedly, "Oh, Anna, I – I was just teasing you. There really wasn't anything embarrassing said, I'm sorry – "

"Okay, okay, I believe you," she says, if only to put a stopper on Elsa's increasingly frenetic stream of assurances. If she's honest, she _likes _the idea that she could ever have this effect on her, likes seeing Elsa climb past her wall of self-assured quips and practice banter. Just to make _Anna _feel better.

Elsa's expression softens. "It's kind of sweet, really."

"The sleep-talking? Or the snoring?"

"_Definitely _the sleep-talking. The snoring is…bulldozer-like."

"Hey!" Anna laughs. "I prefer when you're nice to me."

"Well, you know, I can't have you getting used to it," Elsa says, voice so flat and deadpan it makes Anna stifle a giggle. "Need to keep you on your toes."

Anna just rolls her eyes.

xxx

She interrupts a spiel Elsa's been giving her about truss bridges versus cantilever bridges – probably the most Anna's heard her say at once, inspired by a question Anna had innocently asked as they crossed over the Hudson – to ask, maybe a little crabbily, "So when are we stopping for lunch?"

Elsa huffs. "We just ate at the hotel. You can't wait until we get there?"

"It's been _hours_ since we ate," Anna whines, stretching herself out on the seat like a petulant cat.

"You've waited this long," Elsa says. "Might as well wait a bit longer."

"El_saaaaa_."

Elsa frowns at her, but fails to look remotely annoyed. "Now you're just acting like a child."

"I'm starving! I get hangry!"

"'Hangry'?"

"Yeah, hangry."

"I don't know what that means."

"You've never heard that before?" Anna says. She's noticed that Elsa's full of strange little idiosyncrasies like this – like, how do you live in America in the 21st century and not have heard the word _hangry_? She should probably find it weird, or annoying, but if she's honest, it's mostly just endearing. It's like Elsa's a newly minted cyborg just learning how to navigate the world. Or something. "It's like, you know, hungry and angry."

"Oh, okay," Elsa says, like someone learning a very grave and important fact. "I definitely know what you mean, then."

"_Soooooooo_," Anna drawls, "does that mean we can stop soon?"

"Fine," Elsa sighs. "Where do you want to eat? I'll look for the nearest exit and we can pull over."

"That was easy," Anna muses.

"Don't test me. I could change my mind."

"Oh, please," Anna says. "I think I know by now that you're just a big ol' softie."

Elsa snorts, but doesn't challenge it. Not that Anna needed that as confirmation she was right, anyway.

Twenty minutes later, they're pulling off the highway and onto the main street of what could be literally any mid-sized American town, with Anna cheering for Taco Bell and Elsa smiling bemusedly beside her. She's not used to getting what she wants so easily, not with Johnny or her parents or, well, anyone in her life, but Elsa seems to be totally helpless to her charms (or maybe just a pretty agreeable person in general, but Anna would like to think _she _has something to do with it). Agreeing to the Falls, stopping for food, signing up to take Anna with her in the first place for some reason – Elsa's just been…going along with what Anna asks, despite the token resistance she might initially put up.

Anna kind of likes it.

Elsa says she hates drive-thrus, so they park and go inside to order. Anna takes the lead at the counter, since Elsa's staring up at the menu in bewilderment like she's never been in a Taco Bell before – wait. _Has _she never been in a Taco Bell before? Is that even possible?

"Yeah, uh, can I please get a Cheesy Gordita Crunch and a Chalupa Supreme?" Anna says when it's her turn. She nudges Elsa. "What do you want?"

"What?" Elsa says, eyes wide with what looks like terror, but can't be, because that's an absurd reaction. "I don't – I haven't decided."

"Are you a vegetarian?"

"No," Elsa says.

Anna turns back to the counter. "Could I actually get two of those? And some of those Cinnabon ball things?"

She fumbles with her wallet as the cashier punches her order in, but Elsa's pushing some cash across the counter before Anna can do anything.

"You've been so chivalrous," she says as she carries their tray to a grimy booth in the corner. "Are you ever gonna let me pay for anything?"

"I have manners," Elsa says.

"I mean, you're the one doing _me _a favor here. I feel like I should be contributing something."

"I'm in no need of money."

"Well, still. Shouldn't I, like, make it worth your while somehow?"

Elsa raises an eyebrow at that. "Make it worth my while?"

"Yeah, I – " Wait. "Oh, uh, I – I didn't mean it like _that_, if that's what you were saying – although, I guess, why would you be saying that, that's weird. But that's not what I meant. Not that I wouldn't – I mean, I, uh – "

Elsa cuts her off with a laugh, her hand rising to hide her mouth. "You're easily flustered."

"Okay, well, you know that by now," Anna grumbles. "No need to keep testing it."

They sit, Elsa on one side of the booth, Anna on the other, and Anna digs into her taco with the ferocity of someone who hasn't had anything to eat for a whole two and a half hours. She's halfway through her meal before she notices that Elsa's just been holding hers without having taken a single bite, instead just examining it warily.

"Wassamatter?" Anna says through a mouthful of beef and lettuce.

"Well, I…" Elsa turns the taco so it's horizontal and narrows her eyes at it. "I have a confession, but you're not allowed to make fun of me for it."

Anna swallows her bite in a giant, painful gulp. "Your secret's safe with me."

"I've never actually eaten one of these before."

She wants to laugh, but she's already promised she wouldn't, so instead she says the next thing on her mind, which is, "You are so _cute_."

"You said you wouldn't make fun of me!"

"I'm _not _making fun of you. You're cute."

"I don't like the connotation of that word."

"Well, like it or not, it's what you are," Anna declares. "And it's not hard to eat a taco. You literally just hold it and bite into it. Like this." She demonstrates.

Elsa gingerly picks up her taco with just the tips of her fingers, and half the fillings spill out onto the tray. Anna rolls her eyes and moves to the other side of the booth, so she's next to Elsa.

"Not like that," Anna says. "Here." She picks up the taco and taps Elsa's jaw – personal space be damned – and after a look of surprise, Elsa actually opens her mouth. "Wider than that. You can't be all dainty about it."

Elsa stretches her jaw open and, apparently now all-in, stares expectantly at Anna. Anna, for her part, needs a minute, because for _some _reason, Elsa with her mouth open and her big blue eyes boring so innocently into Anna's, awaiting further instruction – it's doing_ weird _things to her that she really shouldn't be feeling with a taco in her hand.

She shakes it off and feeds Elsa a bit of the taco, holding her hand under her chin to catch whatever falls out. Elsa takes a valiant bite, her eyes closed like it's a herculean effort, and chews contemplatively for several long moments.

"…Well?" Anna says.

Elsa swallows, and says "Another", and so Anna ends up feeding Elsa the entirety of a Cheesy Gordita Crunch like they're some kind of gross high school couple getting food after prom. Her fingers brush against Elsa's lips on the last bite, and Elsa must not notice because she doesn't draw away or stiffen like she usually does when Anna touches her, but to Anna it feels like a jolt of electric current running through every nerve in her body. She remembers how it felt to lay her cheek on Elsa's hand when she was drunk. What is it about Elsa's skin that feels so – good?

It's a gross thought. Elsa's just a stranger trying to do the right thing, and Anna's a woman who's a day out from a broken engagement.

"That was surprisingly delicious," Elsa says. The tip of a pink tongue peeks out from between her lips to lick up a bit of sauce, and Anna, against her better instincts, is mesmerized.

"Yeah," she breathes. "You've got a little –" And before she can think better of it, she reaches up to wipe a tiny speck of something off the corner of Elsa's mouth, and again, the touch is _electrifying_.

Whoa. _Cool it_, she tells herself, but Elsa actually doesn't seem to mind the contact. "Thanks," she says, her lips turning up in the hint of a crooked little smile.

"No problem," Anna says. Her thumb's still on Elsa's face. And why is she whispering? "How come your skin's so cold?"

"It's always been like that," Elsa murmurs.

At that, something tugs against the walls of Anna's brain, the strangest sense of déjà vu that she can't quite place. Her heart balloons unbidden with that weird nostalgia she'd felt in her dream last night. She tries to trace the feeling to its root, but all that does is make her head hurt.

"I like it," Anna says, and Elsa's hand rises to brush lightly against Anna's finger and then – from the table behind them, a baby shrieks and the moment shatters like glass, and Elsa jumps back away from her with a start.

Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

Anna clears her throat awkwardly while Elsa twists her hands around in her lap. "Should probably get going," she says – thank god that's what came out, instead of _That was weird_ or _Sorry I creepily groped your face_ or _You're kind of really hot_.

When they get back in the car, Anna catches a glimpse of herself in the side mirror, and she prays silently that Elsa can't tell how furiously she's blushing.


	5. hearts keep racing

The sun's high in the sky as they make their way across I-90, beating through the windshield to warm Anna's cheeks as she dozes, slipping between consciousness and sleep, in the passenger seat in a lunch-induced haze. Dimly, she registers that Elsa's been silent for a long while in the seat next to her, save for the anxious rapping of her fingers against the wheel.

_Something wrong?_ she wants to ask, but even she – queen of obliviously sauntering past boundaries – knows she's not likely to get an answer to _that _question. Maybe she weirded Elsa out by literally feeding her lunch. That's probably it. Should she…apologize? Acknowledge it?

God. She finds herself thinking _I miss Johnny _for the first time in hours. Men are so much easier.

She stretches languidly across the seat, making a big show of yawning and cracking her neck. Elsa glances at her and then looks away just as quickly when Anna makes eye contact.

Like a stray cat, she thinks. Skittish. No sudden movements or you'll scare her off.

"How're you holding up?" she ventures.

"What – oh, with driving?" Elsa says. "I'm fine. It's only been a few hours."

"Hm."

Well, it was worth a shot. Fine. She can just occupy herself looking at the scenery for however long it takes Elsa to start feeling a little more talkative, right?

Wrong, apparently, because she makes it about five minutes staring out the window before every tree starts to look the same to her and she closes her eyes again.

She's about to drift off when she hears a _tap tap tap_. Probably just Elsa fidgeting again, she thinks, until she hears it again, more urgent and frequent this time, _tap tap tap tap tap. _She can hear it coming from _above _her, now, and it keeps building until it's as loud as a shower of rocks falling on the car's roof, so she opens her eyes and looks around wildly to see –

"Ice," Anna says. "Is that…_hail_?"

Elsa gives her a bewildered look and pulls off to the side of the highway. Good thing, too, because Anna swears the chunks of ice lying around are the size of golfballs and there's more coming, and she does _not _want to be driving into that at seventy miles per hour.

"I don't know what's happening," Elsa mutters, staring at the sky. "This never happens."

"Well, yeah, it's the middle of July," Anna says. "But I've definitely heard about, like, freak summer hailstorms."

Elsa doesn't respond, just throws the hazards on, puts the car in park, and drops her head into her hands, fingers tangling in her hair. Anna hears her take a deep breath in through her nose, and then out through her mouth, the exhale slow and sibilant like her teeth are clenched together.

"Whoa, hey," Anna says, reaching awkwardly across the center console to put a hand on Elsa's back. Elsa, oddly enough, doesn't flinch away or even respond to the touch. "What's going on?" She tries to keep her voice gentle, measured, but truth be told she has no clue what's happening, just that there's something _clearly_ off with Elsa and that suddenly the only thing in the world that matters to Anna is making sure Elsa knows she's right here with her.

It's only when Anna realizes Elsa's shaking – nothing overt, just the hint of a tremor she can feel under her hand – that it hits her: Elsa's scared of storms! _Duh_, she'd said as much literally just yesterday. It's so obvious she can't believe it didn't occur to her as soon as the hail started.

Elsa's removed a hand from her face and is now just pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes screwed shut. The sight makes something in Anna's heart constrict, so she takes Elsa's (freezing cold) hand in her own.

"Hey," she says again. "You don't have to tell me anything about what's wrong, just take as much time as you need, okay?"

Elsa nods wordlessly, and Anna takes it as a good sign that she can feel Elsa holding her hand back. She rubs her thumb across Elsa's palm, feels the sweat pooling in the lines there even though the skin feels like ice. She finds herself wishing she could do something, anything, more substantial to help – she hates feeling useless, and here she is, with no idea what the right words to say might be. Is she allowed to touch Elsa any more than she already is? Would that just freak her out more?

Maybe not making too big a deal out of it is the best course of action. After all, it's obvious that things like dignity and poise and keeping up appearances matter to Elsa, so the fact that she's revealing so much of herself to Anna must be awful for her. So there it is – she'll follow Elsa's lead. If she doesn't want to talk about it, so be it.

"I'm sorry," Elsa says finally. "This is embarrassing. Don't know what's gotten into me."

"Oh, don't worry about it." Anna smiles, like this is just a casual conversation about the weather. "I was just about to ask if we could stop to look at the, um, scenery anyway." Elsa laughs, and Anna squeezes her hand. "And look! The hail's stopped already."

Elsa looks up with a weak smile. "So it has." The smile slips from her face, then, and she stares at Anna with a look in her eyes she hasn't seen there before, something hollow and haunted. "Anna –"

"You know, one time when I was little, I got a concussion from running out into a hailstorm because I thought it was snow, but bigger." Maybe some chattering will help.

"Oh, god. Somehow that explains a lot about you."

"I was, like, five! I just wanted to play," Anna says, trying and failing to suppress a grin at Elsa's chuckle. This is good, laughter is good; she'll tell any number of self-deprecating stories if it means not having to see that stricken, sad look on Elsa's face again. "I was probably like, _man, I'm gonna build such a sick snowman out of this weird rock-snow_. And then bam! Out like a light."

"Wait, what?" At that, Elsa looks alarmed. Oops. Maybe not the best story to tell to someone who just had a bit of a freakout about hail. "You were okay, though, right?" Elsa asks, brows furrowed and eyes earnest.

"Oh, yeah. I was pretty resilient as a kid. I was always getting into trouble," Anna says. "Guess I never really grew out of that, huh?"

"It would seem you haven't," Elsa huffs, with what Anna _thinks _is supposed to sound like exasperation but comes out sounding more like affection, maybe, or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Elsa looks down at her lap to study her hands, one clasped in Anna's.

"I'm sorry, again, about…all that," she says, but Anna cuts her off with a sharp shake of her head.

"You don't have to keep apologizing."

"Sorry," Elsa says again, and then purses her lips, looking sheepish. "Oops."

Anna rolls her eyes. "Okay, that's your last strike."

Elsa giggles. "What happens if I do it again? What's my punishment?"

"I dunno, I haven't thought that far ahead yet. But I'll probably cut you some slack, just 'cause I like you." She winks, and Elsa smiles down at her lap, and is that a blush creeping up her cheeks?

"Just so you know," Elsa says, "I promise I'm not typically prone to, ah…roadside breakdowns. Something like that hasn't happened to me in a _long _time, I usually have better control over – "

She snaps her mouth shut like she's said something she shouldn't have, and Anna gives her hand an encouraging _keep going_ squeeze. "You don't have to worry about anything like that happening again," Elsa finishes.

"Elsa, _seriously_, it's not a big deal, I don't mind," Anna says. And it's true – she's not sure when, over the course of a day, Elsa went from being a friendlier version of an Uber driver to maybe something like a friend, but really, her main concern right now is Elsa's feelings.

"Okay," Elsa says, and Anna thinks if Elsa keeps looking at her like that, things could maybe even be better than _okay_.

xxx

"Can I ask you something?" Anna says, when they're back on the road and cruise-controlling down miles of nondescript asphalt.

"Of course," Elsa replies.

"Is everything alright?" she says, and immediately regrets it when she sees a tiny frown line appear between Elsa's eyebrows. "With you, I mean. Besides what just happened. Or with – you know what, never mind, I'm prying. Forget I said anything."

After a long, contemplative silence during which Anna has to physically clamp her jaw shut to avoid nervously rambling, Elsa says, "Why do you ask?"

"Um, I don't know. Because I care? Is that weird?"

"No." Elsa smiles. "I meant, what makes you think something might not be alright?"

"Oh. Just, I don't know, it seemed like you were being kinda quiet earlier. After lunch. And you kept tapping your fingers on the wheel, which I think you maybe do when you're nervous or something. Like what you're doing right now."

Elsa's fingers still. "You noticed that?" she says, her voice quiet.

"Well, yeah," Anna says, resisting the urge to add _obviously_, because it was kind of hard to miss. "And I've also seen you do this thing where you kind of…squeeze your hands together? Which seems like a nervous habit too. N-not that I've been, like, watching or anything. Just noticed in passing."

Elsa falls back into silence. The radio station they've been listening to starts playing "Can't Fight This Feeling", and Elsa groans and hits the off button with what Anna thinks is an uncalled-for level of aggression.

Hmm.

"I don't mean to be rude," Elsa says hesitantly, "but why _do _you care?"

"I mean…I like you." If she's honest, it really hadn't occurred to her _not _to care. "You're doing me a huge favor. You've been really nice to me. Do I need any other reasons?"

Elsa doesn't say anything, just chews on her bottom lip and frowns out at the road.

"Okay, well, you don't have to tell me anything, obviously," Anna says, "but if it's anything to do with me, or if I, like, made you uncomfortable or anything…y'know, earlier…I'd want you to say something –"

"What? No!" The ferocity in Elsa's voice when she interrupts Anna is uncharacteristic – finally getting to the point instead of waffling around without actually _saying_ anything – and Elsa seems to realize it, because she clears her throat and lowers her voice before continuing. "No, no, it's – it's not you. It doesn't have anything to do with you."

She's suspicious that there's something under Elsa's words that she isn't saying, but whatever – she'll let it go for now.

"You remind me of someone I once knew," Elsa says, the words coming out all rushed and jumbled together, like she had to work up the nerve to say it and then spit it all out before the courage left her.

"I do?" Anna perks up. Everything Elsa says that's actually honest, that actually shares something about her life and who she is, feels like a scrap of food would to a starving dog. "How?"

"Just little things. Like, ah…your hair's the same color as hers."

"Oh. Is that it?" she says, trying not to sound disappointed. "I mean, I guess redheads are pretty rare."

Elsa giggles, and Anna tries not to be _too _obvious with the way her eyes follow the movement of Elsa's hand as she brings it up to cover her mouth. The way Elsa laughs – everything from the sound itself to the way her eyes crinkle up a bit or the small, exasperated shake of her head – stirs something in her, kicks up the dust in the recesses of her mind until it settles into something warm and familiar.

(Earlier, when they were leaving the hotel, Anna had tripped over the door's threshold and yelped and pinwheeled her arms in the air until she careened into a hallway plant – Elsa laughed at her, which was enough to make Anna blush, but then she'd said _Oh, Anna_ in a low, soft voice and Anna's heart had done something she'd never felt before.)

"Well, who is she?" At this, Elsa quirks an eyebrow, so Anna explains, "This mystery woman I remind you of."

"Um, a…friend, I suppose," Elsa says delicately.

"You hesitated."

"What?"

"C'mon, don't play dumb. 'A…'" She stops, raises her eyebrows at Elsa, and lets her look confused for a good five seconds before she continues, "'…friend'."

"I'm not catching your meaning."

"You paused _very_ _meaningfully _before you said she's a friend."

"Seriously?" Elsa scoffs. "_Must_ you observe and call out my every behavior?"

"Stop doing cryptic things and I'll stop calling them out," Anna says, earning an eyeroll from Elsa.

"You are impossible." Elsa huffs like she's annoyed, but then her face softens. Not like she's managed, yet, to successfully pretend to be genuinely irritated with Anna. "…but yes, you caught me. I don't know if 'friend' would be the most accurate label. It's…complicated."

"Ooh!" Anna claps her hands together. Girl problems, maybe? Anna can't imagine someone like Elsa getting hung up on, well, anyone else, and she especially can't imagine how perfect of a woman you'd have to be to catch _Elsa's_ attention – so that's probably not it, but it's a fun thought. "_Complicated_, huh? Sounds dramatic."

"It is dramatic," Elsa says dryly, "but unfortunately not in an exciting way."

"Oh. Sorry." Maybe _that's_ what's been on Elsa's mind. She's not sure why the idea disappoints her, leaves her with a sinking in her chest.

"Don't be."

"Do you think you might ever tell me more about her?" Anna says, her voice turning up hopefully at the end of the question.

"It depends on how long we end up knowing each other." Elsa smiles.

"Well, I hope that's a long, long time, because I like you and you've left me with too many unanswered questions for me to not get answers to any of them." She points a stern finger at Elsa. "And I don't let things go, ever, so don't think I'll forget."

Anna's about to close her eyes to doze off again – seriously, this highway is so _boring _it keeps putting her to sleep even though all she wants is to stay up and keep peeling layers away from Elsa – when she hears Elsa say (quietly, almost a murmur), "I hope so too."

xxx

They stop for gas in some tiny, dusty town right off the highway, and Elsa asks Anna if she wants any snacks from the convenience store attached to the gas station, but Anna's so sleepy all she does is mumble "chocolate". Five minutes later, she's startled awake when her door opens and a bag of something heavy is dropped into her lap, and she hears Elsa squeak, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to throw it down that hard!"

Anna peers into the bag, eyes still bleary from sleep, and finds Hershey's, Reese's, Twix, Milky Way, Snicker's, and M&M's, _heaps_ of each. She gapes up at Elsa with an incredulous grin.

"All you said was chocolate," Elsa says sheepishly, her hands clasped in front of her, "and I didn't know exactly which kind you liked, so I just…got an assortment. I hope that's alright."

She's still staring blankly – digesting, mentally, the image of Elsa standing with perfect posture in the middle of a 7/11, perusing the shelves with practiced placidity before panicking and shoving as much candy into a bag as she can – when Elsa closes her door and strides over to the gas pumps to fill up. Anna watches as her delicate, long fingers grasp the nozzle, watches her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and measures the quickening beats of her own heart when she registers a feeling all too familiar to her: _heat_. Desire. Want.

Elsa's gorgeous, and sweet, and so interesting, and there's no denying that Anna's got herself a _dumb_ little crush. God, she's predictable.

She's pretty sure the windows are tinted, so she makes no attempt to disguise her blatant leering until Elsa catches her eye and gives a little wave and _shit_, wait, maybe the windows aren't tinted after all. Suddenly she's very interested in examining the display of gas prices behind Elsa.

"Hey," she says when Elsa gets back in the car. Why is her voice suddenly an octave higher than normal?

"You really need to work on the subtlety of your staring."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Anna says, but her cheeks are burning and Elsa's giving her a crooked little grin out of just one corner of her mouth, and screw it, she'll embarrass herself as much as she needs to if it means Elsa will keep giving her that _smile_.

"Is there anything you like in there?" Elsa nods toward the bag in Anna's lap.

"Um, anything? _Everything _I like is in here. You basically cleared out their candy aisle." She smiles. "Thank you. You didn't have to do that."

"I wanted to," Elsa says, and the sunlight catches in Elsa's hair _just _right, so the rays dance among white-yellow strands and light up her whole head like a halo. From where Anna's sitting, Elsa looks a whole lot like an angel right now. Which would make sense, honestly: Elsa as some kind of guardian angel, in the right place at the right time.

She finds herself saying, "I'm glad it was you I ran into."

Something softens in Elsa's eyes. "Me too."

xxx

"You have the same smile as her."

"Excuse me?"

"The girl I was talking about earlier, the one you remind me of. You have the same smile."

xxx

Anna's not sure if she's imagining it, but she _thinks_ some of Elsa's earlier walls – the practiced calm, the occasional nervousness – have started to crumble a bit. She sure _seems _more at ease than she was when they first met. Earlier, Anna had stretched absentmindedly and left her hand resting on the shoulder of Elsa's seat – something she'd always do when Johnny was driving – and when she'd caught herself with a start, Elsa had said, quietly, "You can leave your hand there, if you want."

It seems like a start.

Still, warning lights flash red and urgent in the back of her mind: you're not _done _with Johnny, you're not done with any of the mess you're in, you just think you can avoid it for now because you don't actually have to look at it.

It helps not to have her phone. It must be blowing up by now, worried texts and voicemails and missed calls, but hey, she can't answer any of them, so they might as well not exist. For now. Until she goes back home.

Elsa probably has enough of those travel points to keep them in a hotel for, like, a _few _days at least, right?

She feels almost dirty, tainted by the weight of her guilt, the proverbial albatross dragging her down by the neck. She's never been one to run from responsibility; she likes to think of herself as someone with a moral backbone, someone who can do the right thing no matter how hard it is. But when she thinks about her wedding day, how it could possibly have gone differently, her brain just shuts down. There's no other way it could have ended. (The _right_ thing to do would have been to end this goddamn relationship at one of the many red flags that popped up well before the wedding, but he was charming and sweet and she was stupid and, a small voice tells her, desperate.)

And then there's Elsa, and the tangle of feelings that rises in Anna's chest when she glances over to her left to see her humming quietly to herself as she drives. She chants to herself, to help keep from doing something reckless: you just met her, you just met her, you _just met _her. But then why does that feel so _false_? To be sure, Anna loves meeting new people, and she's got a penchant for turning strangers into friends far quicker than most, but she can't shake the conviction that this is _different _from that.

When Elsa smiles at her, it's with the fondness of someone who's known her for years, and there's something so tender and vulnerable in the way she talks to Anna. It's the sort of instant, magical gut feeling you learn to dismiss in adulthood. Anna's too old to believe in things like soulmates, or fate, or anything like that, but here she is, watching Elsa play with the end of her braid and wondering why that gesture looks so damn _familiar_.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" she asks.

"Not that I can remember," Elsa says slowly, cautiously, probably because the question was an insane one to spring on her out of nowhere. "Why? Do I look familiar?"

"Kind of," Anna says. "You've lived in Cleveland your whole life?"

"Basically."

"Hm. Maybe we went to school together at some point or something."

"Maybe." Elsa starts her nervous tapping on the steering wheel. "What brought on this line of questioning?"

"I don't know, just…I don't know. Remember earlier, when I was talking about when you meet certain people and you just have a _feeling _about them?"

Elsa nods.

"Well, I thought that's all it was, but now, just, I dunno. You just seem _so _familiar, and I can't put my finger on it." She shakes her head. "I don't mean to be creepy. It just bothers me that I can't remember. I'm usually so good with names and faces."

"I think if I had ever met you before this, I would definitely remember it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she says, with a smile.

"You're a very memorable person." Elsa huffs, a sound that's probably supposed to be a laugh, but comes out sounding oddly dry and humorless. "I can't imagine meeting you and ever forgetting about you."

Wow. Okay, then. She thinks she'd have remembered Elsa, too – not least because of how beautiful she is, and hey, Anna's only human – which is why this feeling doesn't make sense. But it makes her head hurt when she tries to think too deeply about it, so she'll drop it for now.

Ahead of them, the sun's starting to set, staining the sky with orange and pink as it dips below the horizon line. If she'd had her phone on her, she would've taken it out to snap a picture, basic as the habit may be. "Is it true that really pretty sunsets are just because of, like, pollution in the air?" she asks. Something tells her Elsa would know. "Johnny always used to tell me that."

Elsa scoffs. "Sometimes, but it's not nearly that simple."

"Explain."

"Those colors you see are because of particles in the air scattering the light," Elsa says. "Pollution can be part of that, sometimes, but usually, all those particles do is mute the colors. It's usually other, smaller particles. Dust, aerosols, ice, water droplets." She smiles. "So in short, your fiancé is wrong. And he sounds like an ass," she adds, with a cool, wry venom coloring her voice that makes Anna giggle.

"Not really my fiancé anymore," she says, "but yeah, he is an ass."

"You deserve better," Elsa says, and Anna wonders if she's imagining the way her voice frays at the edges when she says it.

She closes her eyes. If the sun's setting, that means they've been driving for a while, and they must almost be there. The thought brings with it a sharp spike of nervousness – not the fear-tinged kind, but more like…anticipatory first-date nerves. A memory creeps up on her, unbidden: Elsa's arm around her as she helped her to her room yesterday, the gentle pressure of her hands against Anna's waist.

"Anna." Something brushes her shoulder, and she opens her eyes to see Elsa gingerly tapping her on the shoulder.

"Hm?"

"Look," Elsa says, and points at the sky.

"_Whoa!_" Anna gasps. Where before, the sun's descent had lit the sky with a gentle peach glow, now it's a brilliant purple shot through with a column of bright orange light. "God, that's beautiful. What _is _that?"

"It's called a sun pillar. Happens when light from the sun reflects off of ice crystals surrounding it."

"_Wow_. I've never seen anything like this before."

"They're pretty rare." Elsa looks over at her, her eyes lit up with something more than just the reflection of the sun. "Do you like it?"

"It's beautiful," she says again, and feels like the hero in a cheesy romantic comedy when she glances at Elsa and finds her breath taken away by more than just the beauty of the sky. "So how do you know all this stuff anyway?"

"I'm very smart."

Anna giggles. "Oh, shut up. I'm being for real."

"I don't know that I have a real answer for you," Elsa says. "I suppose I just like to learn. I had a lot of free time when I was younger to just sit in my room and read."

"Ah," Anna says knowingly. "So you're a nerd."

Elsa just rolls her eyes. "You're one to talk. Didn't you say you were in grad school?"

"That's different." Anna bites her lip to hide her dumb, giddy smile; she likes seeing this side of Elsa, the teasing, banter-y side.

"If you say so."

"I do say so," she says. "Plus, you're, like, an engineer, right? So that makes it even worse."

"Watch it," Elsa mutters, trying and failing to mask a laugh. "I could kick you out of my car right now and leave you stranded here."

"Empty threat."

"You don't know that."

"Sure I do. Y'know, when I met you I thought you were kinda intimidating and scary, but it's literally only taken me this long to figure out that you're just a big ol' softie. You should try to hide that better."

Elsa smiles and shakes her head, but she doesn't deny it, which Anna counts as a victory. Ahead of them, the sky continues to dim, and the lamps on the side of the road flicker on, and a sign to their right reads: Niagara Falls, next exit. The display on the dash glows the same electric-blue as Elsa's eyes, and Anna thinks, _I could get used to this_.


	6. not who we used to be

"Do you drink wine at every meal?"

Elsa's fingers pinch the stem of a half-filled wine glass, and Anna's eyes follow the motion of her hand as she swirls it slowly, lazily, before taking a sip. The lines of her wrist are impossibly sharp; her bones stand in relief as she holds the glass up to her mouth. When she puts it down, Anna can make out the slightest blush of a lipstick stain where Elsa drank from. The pink tip of a tongue darts out to catch a lingering drop on her top lip, and her throat bobs as she swallows. It's like Elsa's doing it particularly slowly, lasciviously, just to taunt her.

Jesus Christ. Anna's practically salivating and they haven't even ordered their food yet.

"Not _every_ meal," Elsa says, "but most, yes."

Wait, what? What was the question again? What have they even been talking about for the half-hour they've been at this restaurant?

They've been at Niagara for all of a few hours – Elsa, of course, got them another mysteriously nice hotel with her seemingly endless supply of points and money – and already she can recognize that whatever's going on with her, she is _way _out of her depth. She never felt this way with Johnny: off-kilter, off-balance. Volatile, like a pot of water about to boil over. Is this feeling specific to Elsa, or is this how people always feel around beautiful girls? She's never actually _been with_ a woman before, although she's always figured she'd probably be open to the right one, but if _this _is what it feels like just to be near a pretty girl then maybe she's not cut out for it.

"Anna?"

"Huh?" Elsa's voice cuts through the fog of her thoughts, and she starts so violently she knocks over her glass of water. "Oh. Oh, god. Oops." She sops up the water with her napkin. Some of the ice cubes have spilled onto her lap – the cold is enough to bring her crashing back down to Earth, thank god. "God, sorry about that. What were you saying?"

Elsa regards her with bemusement. "Is there something on my face? You were staring."

Oh, shit. "Uh, no, sorry, I just – just zoned out for a minute there." Her voice is an octave higher than normal. She clears her throat. "I'm good now, though."

"Alright then," Elsa says, still looking skeptical. "You were asking me about my wine habit."

"Oh, yeah!" Okay, good, steer the conversation back to its track. "I never really could get into wine, to be honest. I mean, you saw me at that hotel bar. If I'm gonna be drinking something, it's gotta be full of sugar."

Elsa rolls her eyes. "I used to be like that when I was younger."

"Oh, whatever! Like you're so much wiser and older now?" She tries to sound acerbic, but it's a fool's errand when Elsa's smiling at her like that. "I know you won't tell me how old you are 'cause it'll ruin your whole, like, mysterious stranger thing, but you can't _seriously_ expect me to believe you're that much older than me."

"You can believe what you want," Elsa says, in a voice so serious Anna can't tell if she's joking.

"Well, anyway, I _have_ kinda always wanted to try more things. Like, classier things."

There's a pause during which Elsa frowns down at the menu, makes that cute little furrowed-brow face that Anna's noticed she makes when she thinks. "You know, if you're interested in trying something new, I could maybe…get a bottle of something sent up to my room that we could share later? If you would want that?"

Sirens go off in her head. "That sounds fun," she says. "Wait, but what if I don't like it?"

"I'll find something you'll like, I promise."

"You sound awfully confident."

Elsa winks at her, and the gesture is so un-Elsa that Anna's pretty sure it short-circuits something in her brain.

They order their food – Elsa gets something French-sounding involving duck, maybe, and Anna gets an overpriced burger. She's not sure if she's reading too much into things, but from what she's seen, the way Elsa talks to other people is _completely _different from the way she's been talking to Anna. She's polite with the waitstaff, of course, but there's just…a coldness there that she doesn't remember hearing from her even at their first meeting in the orchard.

"So, Anna," Elsa says once the waiter's left. "Are you…feeling any better? About everything?"

It takes Anna a second to reply, because for a moment she's too busy focusing on the way Elsa says her name – delicately, reverently, savoring each syllable like the slow sips of wine she takes. She's never really liked her name. It's so short, so simple. But Elsa makes it sound like much more than that.

"Yeah. I feel okay, actually," she finally says. It's surprising how true it is – the more time she spends with Elsa, the more okay she feels. It's bizarre. "I think it makes it easier that I'm not just, you know, going straight home all alone. It's nice to have a distraction." She gasps. "N-not that you're just a distraction! I mean, you're definitely more than that. That didn't come out right."

Elsa just tilts her head and smiles at her.

"I'm just gonna…stop talking for a while," Anna groans. "You deserve a break from all the rambling."

"I like your rambling," Elsa says.

Anna blushes, tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear to give her hands something to do. "Oh. Okay. Suit yourself, then. But don't complain when you get sick of me in a few days."

"Please," Elsa scoffs. "Who could get sick of you?"

"Bold words for someone who's known me for a day." Anna grins. "You're right, though. I'm a ray of sunshine."

Elsa gives her a small, shy smile that makes her heart flutter, and just then, their waiter brings their food and interrupts what Anna thought might've been a Moment between them. But after the waiter sets their food down and Anna dispatches him with a "thanks so much, everything looks delicious", she peers over the towering burger in front of her and catches a glimpse of Elsa looking at her with that same smile, except this time, it's not for her benefit; it's private, a moment between Elsa and Elsa alone.

When Elsa catches her looking, she averts her eyes and pretends to be _very_ focused on her food, but a hint of that little smile remains, and Anna keeps looking.

"Hey," Anna says, ducking her head down to try to catch Elsa's eye.

"Hello," Elsa replies. She's still smiling, down at her meal.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?"

"My duck confit."

"Yeah, okay."

"What?" Elsa rearranges her features in an unconvincing attempt at nonchalance. "It looks good."

She'll let Elsa have this one, she decides, so she lets it go. Elsa eats her meal daintily, with tiny little bird-bites, like a civilized person, while Anna grabs her burger with both hands and has to practically unhinge her jaw to get the first bite in. Elsa's probably the type of person who eats burgers with a knife and a fork.

"I feel like I owe you a better explanation for earlier," Elsa says.

"Earlier?"

"In the car, when you…asked me whether I was doing alright. And I gave you a bit of a non-answer."

"Mmm. Right." Anna nods. "I remember. But you don't really owe me anything, you know. It's totally cool if you don't want to tell me. I was just kinda wondering."

"No, I do want to tell you," Elsa says. "It was nice of you to ask." She sucks in a deep breath. "To tell the truth, there's just been...a lot going on in my life lately, I suppose. My mind has been all over the place."

Anna gives her what she hopes is an encouraging nod, but Elsa's already clammed up again, frowning down at her plate in silence, chewing her lip.

"I can tell there's more you wanna say, you know," Anna says. Elsa gives her a questioning glance, so she explains, "You're doing that thing with your lip."

"It's unsettling how well you read me."

"You're pretty predictable."

"Hm. Well, okay, yes. I would love to tell you what's on my mind, but...I don't know. I don't know how to put it in words." She sighs.

"Can I try to guess?"

Elsa scoffs. "You're going to _guess_ what's troubling me."

"Yeah!" She claps her hands together excitedly. "And if I get it right you have to tell me more."

"God. Fine."

"Okay..." She pressed her fingers to Elsa's temples, closes her eyes and makes a big show out of pretending to read her mind. "What's bothering you is that...you're at dinner with the most beautiful girl you've ever met and she's making you nervous."

"What – Anna!" Elsa bats her hands away and crosses her arms. Anna can't help but giggle - it makes her look like a grumpy child, the way she's pouting. "I thought you were being serious!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" She stifles another bout of laughter. "Okay, that was only my first guess. You're saying it was wrong?"

"_Yes_," Elsa says with an eye-roll.

"Hmm...alright. Is it personal or, like, work related or something?"

"Personal."

"Is it...boy problems?" she says, grinning. "'Cause, y'know, I know all about that. Maybe I could give you advice."

Elsa snorts and chokes on her sip of wine in the process. "No, I am not having _boy problems_."

At this point, should she even bother trying to tamp down the little thrill of hope that courses through her when Elsa says that? "Okaaaay," she says, trying to sound casual, "girl problems, then?"

Elsa narrows her eyes, takes another agonizingly slow sip of wine, and Anna wonders if it's significant that she doesn't immediately scoff and dismiss it. "Not really," she finally says.

"Not _really_?" Anna says. She raises an eyebrow. Elsa says nothing, just shrugs and puts a tiny bite of food in her mouth and chews it for way longer than necessary.

Is she being invasive? Pushy? Maybe so. Maybe she should back off a little, slow things down and stop turning every conversation into a chance for emotional intimacy. Forced, artificial closeness isn't really her thing, and she's sure other than Elsa would probably be _so _fed up with her by now. Hell, _she'd_ be fed up by now – Anna's always liked people, liked getting to know them and learning their stories, but the only thing that can explain how much she _cares_ about Elsa is that otherworldly, inexplicable tether that seems to be pulling her in, like a planet's gravity trapping her in its orbit.

It's something bigger than herself (and bigger than the way Elsa's eyes make her breath leave her lungs). So why not just…follow it, and see where it takes her?

And Elsa's looking at her so expectantly, her head tilted down toward her plate but eyes fixed on Anna's, with a question implicit in the way her eyebrows are turned up ever so slightly. So she says, "Is that what it is? A girl?"

She thinks she can read panic in Elsa's eyes. "Come on, Elsa," she says, "it's 2019. You don't have to, like, be scared to tell me or anything."

"Uh," Elsa says. "Well, it's – I – I suppose you could put it that way, then, yes."

"Okay! See, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Mmm."

"So what's going on, exactly?" She takes a bite of her burger so big she can't talk past it, so that Elsa will _have _to say something to fill the silence while she chews.

"I…lost someone recently," Elsa says.

"Oh. Oh, shit." Oh no. "Lost someone, like, to…death?"

Elsa shakes her head.

"Oh, okay. So like a breakup, then?"

"That's one way to look at it."

_What?_ "Tell me about her." Maybe that'll get them somewhere past _I suppose so_ and _You could put it that way_.

At that, Elsa looks confused, like she's never been asked the question before. "Tell you…about her? What do you want to know?"

Anna rolls her eyes. "Okay, I'm not, like, trying to interrogate you, as much as it might feel like it. I just meant…y'know, tell me about her! What she's like, what you like about her, what you don't."

A far-away look clouds Elsa's eyes; her gaze rests somewhere past Anna's shoulder, and the slightest hint of a smile colors her features. The way her eyes soften, the way the frown lines in her face melt into nothing even though it's clear she's lost in thought, the way the only other time Anna's seen her look this at peace was when she was asleep – it all grips Anna's heart with a muted pang of irrational, awful, selfish jealousy. What does she have to be jealous about? That this stranger has a life and other people she cares about? Elsa needs a _friend_ right now, clearly, so _that's_ what she needs to be focused on giving her.

"I'm not sure where to start," Elsa says.

"Maybe with her name?" Anna offers. She can do this. She can act more like an adult than a lovesick (lust-sick, she corrects herself) sixteen-year-old.

"No," Elsa says with a quick shake of her head, quietly but so fiercely Anna knows implicitly she shouldn't push that. "Sorry. I can't."

"I get it." Anna gives her what she hopes is a soft, encouraging smile. "You know you don't actually _have_ to talk about this."

"No, I – I do. I'm just not in the habit of telling people…well, telling people anything, really. It does help when you prompt me like that."

"Oh! Okay." She brightens instantly. "Lemme think, then. Okay, tell me about…what color her eyes are."

"To be honest, I'm not sure the English language has a word for it." Elsa sighs, but she's got that wistful, sad smile on her face again. "They're beautiful, though. Sort of teal? Blue, but hints of green. I'm not describing it right, I'm not eloquent enough. Think of…the sea, maybe, and that might be closest."

Anna grins despite herself. "_Wow_, okay, Romeo." It draws a laugh from Elsa. "That was the most surface-level question I could come up with and you _still_ managed to be all sappy about it. How do the ladies resist you?"

"That's mean," Elsa says, but she's hiding a smile. "You can't ask me personal questions and then mock me for my answers."

"Yeah, you're right, I guess. You just make it so easy."

"Ask me another."

"Umm…okay, if you could sum her up in one word, what would it be?"

Elsa doesn't hesitate. "_Alive_," she says. Like she didn't even have to think about it.

"Everyone's _alive_."

"Yes, but the not the way she was – is. Vibrant. Full of life. So…different from me," Elsa says. "I've always been fine with just…doing what was expected of me, you know? My life's always been about duty and responsibility, and I've always been fine with that. But she just – she wanted everything, she wanted the world, she wanted love and family and all the things you read about in fairytales." She takes a deep breath in through her nose, lets it hiss out through gritted teeth. "And she deserved it all. She deserved more than what I could give her, in any case."

"What does that mean? What couldn't you give her?"

Elsa looks up at her, her eyes shining. "I was never good enough for her."

"I'm sure that's not true," Anna says quietly.

"No, it is. She'd never have actually told me that, but I knew." Elsa lets out a humorless little laugh. "She was…light and radiance and the sun and everything I wasn't. I never quite knew how to measure up." She downs the rest of her wine and shakes her head just a bit as if trying to get rid of brainfreeze. "God. I'm sorry, I got carried away. I didn't mean to dump all my emotional baggage on you over the course of one conversation."

For her part, Anna's still reeling from what Elsa said – not necessarily from the words themselves, but from the gravity they so obviously bore, the haunted look in Elsa's eyes as she talked with her head bowed like the memories were a physical weight dragging her down by the spine. A small, stupid voice in her head asks how _she_ could ever dream to compete with this mystery woman; a louder voice tells her there's no reason to care.

"No, that's…that's totally okay," she says. Then she smiles, to convince both of them that everything's still the way it was before this conversation. "What'd I tell you about always saying sorry?"

Elsa chuckles. "Not to do it."

"Right," Anna says. Her burger lies forgotten on her plate (a shame, since it was honestly really good). "Want another question?"

"I think I've talked enough about myself." There's something unreadable written under the way Elsa's looking at Anna right now. "Let's talk about you for once."

xxx

When they're done eating, they both head to Elsa's room. Anna immediately flops on the bed to wait while Elsa goes to fetch the wine bottle she'd promised. "Don't touch my things," Elsa warns before she leaves, and Anna's _kind of _hurt that Elsa thought she would've. Of course she'd never touch any of Elsa's stuff. There's barely any stuff to speak of, anyway – just one tiny little carry-on size bag and a backpack, placed neatly in the corner of the room.

They honestly could have shared a room, she thinks as she sprawls out on the queen bed, tossing the _ridiculous_ amount of provided pillows to the ground so she has a place to lay her head. But Elsa seems like someone who's really big on things like boundaries and personal space and not having to sleep next to a stranger.

But she _did_ sleep next to a stranger, last night when she fell asleep on the couch in Anna's hotel room in a position that looked like it had bent her spinal cord in a ninety-degree angle. For all her stiffness and attempts at keeping a distance…she practically carried a drunk Anna to her room, and then sat there watching over her until she fell asleep.

Elsa's full of contradictions. Things that don't make sense. Puzzle pieces that don't quite fit into place.

There's a click and a whir from the door as Elsa enters, toting two bottles of wine, one white, one red. "One for you, one for me," she says. She opens them effortlessly with the corkscrew in the desk drawer, pours two generous portions into two glasses, and Anna is mesmerized, watching her move about the room as fluidly as wind itself, or air, or water, or something like that. (Metaphors have never been Anna's strong suit.)

Elsa perches herself on the edge of the bed cautiously, daintily, her legs crossed just-so and her body a perfectly polite distance away from Anna's. Anna doesn't like it. She wants to be _closer_, much closer. She remembers her early high-school flirtation with Johnny, when they'd hang out at his house under the guise of working on a group project together. They'd start out sitting on opposite ends of a loveseat, notebooks on their laps, and Anna would scoot coyly closer and closer until she was flush with his body, and they'd just sit like that for hours pretending the contact wasn't sending spikes of heat through both of them.

It's funny to look back on, because what she felt back then was _nothing_ compared to the electricity that lights her skin afire just from looking at Elsa's pointer finger and thumb absentmindedly rubbing at the bedsheet between them. It's honestly embarrassing.

"Why'd you pick this one for me?" she says, sniffing the wine in her glass suspiciously.

"Wild guess," Elsa says. "Let me know if you like it."

"Well, I told you I'm not much of a wine person, right?" She takes a sip. "Okay, wait, never mind. I like this. You're two for two on surprising me with drinks I like."

"I had to keep my promise, didn't I?"

They turn the TV on – Anna grabs the channel guide from the bedside drawer and fumbles with the remote until she finds TCM (Elsa seems like the sort of person who would like old movies). _West Side Story _is playing. She remembers this movie, vaguely, mostly because her brother had tried to show it to her and she got bored within the first twenty minutes.

Elsa lets out a pleased little hum next to her and says, "Oh, I like this film."

Well, fine, then. Maybe Anna can learn to like it. Or maybe she can ignore the movie and keep herself entertained watching the smile that flickers across Elsa's features, faint but unmistakable, or the way the light from the screen reflects off of her eyes.

"Let's turn the lights off," Anna says. "For an authentic movie-watching experience."

"Go ahead." Elsa swings her legs onto the bed, stretches like a cat and inches toward the headboard until her back is resting against it. The lines of tension in her body are a little less pronounced now. When Anna gets up to turn the light off, she can feel Elsa's eyes on her – she has to stand on her toes to reach the switch on the tall lamp in the corner, and suddenly she's _very_ aware of the AC's cold air hitting her exposed calves. It gives her goosebumps.

"Turn the volume up," she says, climbing back onto the bed, sitting closer to Elsa than she was before but still not quite close enough to touch. Elsa grabs the remote and then – she's not sure if she's imagining it, but she _swears_ Elsa puts her hand back down on the bed a few inches closer to her than it was before.

Anna's already lost track of the movie. She takes a long swig from her glass of wine and waits for the numb warmth to spread over her skin. Elsa's hand taunts her. It'd be so easy to reach out, just tangle those long fingers in her own, just to feel –

"You're not watching," Elsa murmurs.

"I've seen this movie before," she lies.

"So have I." She doesn't take her eyes off the screen; her voice is quiet, hushed, like they're in an actual movie theater. "You seem preoccupied. Something on your mind?"

"Nope." Another sip from her glass, then another, then another. Liquid courage. It's uncharacteristic of her – alcohol's never changed her behavior much. She's not someone who needs to be drunk to do what she wants. But she should probably stop expecting to act like herself around Elsa.

The light from the screen dances over Elsa's face, making her eyes glitter and her skin glow an ethereal blue-white. She takes a drink and her top lip shimmers where it skimmed the surface of the wine; the tendons in her neck pull taut when she swallows. There's a little trail of faint golden-white peach fuzz along Elsa's jawline that's usually not actually visible, since the hairs are so tiny, but the TV light illuminates it so that her jaw looks like it's highlighted in fine gold filigree. Anna finds herself wondering what it would be like to shift closer and kiss a line up that jawline, up to her earlobe and maybe elsewhere, too.

Her hand's still on the bed.

In a moment of stupid, blind impulse, Anna reaches her hand out and lays it on Elsa's. She waits to see if Elsa will flinch away – she doesn't, just glances down in surprise and then returns her attention to the movie – and then gently weaves her fingers through the spaces between Elsa's, like threads on a loom.

In the dim light of the television, Anna sees the corner of Elsa's lip turn up just a little bit. It's _that_ smile, the one that's different from the others – the one that's a bit crooked, one-sided, the one that stirs what feels like a memory in Anna's mind. Then, slowly, Elsa's fingers close around her palm too, so they're _really_ holding hands now.

Neither of them actually acknowledge it in words, which Anna likes – it makes it feel like it was something only natural, something so obvious there's no need to question it or speak it out loud.

But then she can't stop herself from whispering, "Your skin's so cold."

"Your skin's so warm."

Through the shitty television speakers, Tony and Maria sing, _Tonight, tonight, I saw you and the world went away_, and something compels Anna to shift closer still to Elsa. Now, their bodies are _almost_ touching; the lines of their hips are separated by mere millimeters. She'll settle for this, though, because she doesn't want to do _too_ much and weird Elsa out. _Here you are, and what was just the world is a star._

In a quiet, small voice, Elsa asks, "Do you mind if I lay my head on your shoulder?"

Anna's heart hurtles through her chest and into her throat. "No, that's okay."

With Elsa next to her, the hair on top of her head tickling Anna's neck, their hands laced loosely together – she'll just have to live with not knowing what ends up happening to Tony and Maria, because there's no _way_ she's paying attention to the rest of the movie.

xxx

Anna's been laying on her back, counting the tiles on the ceiling, for god knows how long now. Sleep won't come - her mind buzzes, chirps like a brood of cicadas with thoughts of Johnny, her family, what she'll tell her friends, how much everyone knows of what's happened, what awaits her when she gets back.

But mostly she's just been thinking about Elsa. Anna doesn't actually know how she ended up tucked into bed, with Elsa snoring softly next to her, but she assumes she fell asleep in the middle of the movie and Elsa was just kind enough not to wake her up and kick her out. She woke up sometime around four in the morning and now here she is, as alert as if she'd slept for ten hours. How is she supposed to relax when all she sees out of the corner of her eyes is blonde hair, pale skin, a chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm that matches her own heartbeat?

The air in the hotel room is freezing. Elsa must have turned the AC down when she wasn't looking - she's pretty sure the display on the thermostat says it's 64 degrees, which is way too cold. She tiptoes over to the thermostat, carefully so as not to wake Elsa, and cranks the temperature up to one that makes for a habitable living environment for human beings. It comes to life with a groan and a blast of warmer air, and she sinks back into bed. Maybe she'll be able to fall asleep now that she isn't literally shivering.

But then - something shatters the silence of the night.

A sound. She lies perfectly still for a moment to see if she can hear it again - nothing comes, though, and she's letting out a breath when - it happens again.

Clearer this time. It's...a whimper?

She cocks her head toward Elsa in an effort to hear better. Her senses must be deceiving her, there's no way - but no, there it is again, a little louder this time, and too clear to be denied. Elsa's eyes are closed, and she's clearly still asleep, but her face is all screwed up and she's clutching her pillowcase like a lifeline and - yup, again, and it's unmistakable this time - she's _whimpering_.

God, the sound is agonizing - it's so soft you almost couldn't hear it if you weren't paying attention, but it's so clearly a sound of pain and fear and something visceral and real. And it makes Anna want to gather Elsa up in her arms or wake her up or whisper something reassuring into her ear or _something,_ anything to make it stop. She settles for tapping Elsa gently on her shoulder.

That doesn't do much. "Elsa," Anna whispers. "Elsa, wake up."

Elsa stirs a bit, but only to curl her knees into herself. Her lips part, and the next sound she makes is a quiet, open-mouthed cry that makes Anna's heart feel like a car window shattering into a million dust-sized pieces of glass.

Maybe she should try a different tack, she thinks. She scoots across the bedspread, inches herself over the gulf between them until she's close enough to count each freckle on Elsa's nose, and places a hand flat on Elsa's back, rubbing small circles into it.

The whimpering stops for a moment, and she thinks maybe she's succeeded, but Elsa's still breathing hard and still has her eyebrows knit together. Anna wonders what she's dreaming about. Probably something awful. Poor thing. Why won't she wake up, though? Anna sleeps like a rock, so she gets it, but Elsa doesn't really seem like that type.

"Hey," she says, a little louder this time. She ghosts her hand over Elsa's cheek.

Then – Elsa leans her face ever so slightly into Anna's palm, and – so quietly it might not have happened at all – says in a ragged, broken voice, "Anna."

She freezes, not sure if she imagined it or if Elsa had actually said her name. Maybe it's just Elsa acknowledging her presence there, like, _Anna why the hell are you caressing my face, _but Elsa shows no signs of being awake. Her eyes dart about under her eyelids – Anna remembers reading somewhere that that means she's dreaming.

"Anna," Elsa says again. Her voice breaks and crashes, like a wave, against what sounds like the beginning of a sob. It's _terrifying_. Anna has no fucking clue what to do or why Elsa's saying her name like that but she knows if she has to hear it again – that desperate, pleading note in Elsa's voice – she might lose it, too.

"Hey, shh, shh," she whispers. "You're okay, you're just dreaming." She's reminded of that moment earlier, in the car, except this is so much worse because she doesn't know what's wrong and there's no indication that Elsa even registers any of what she's doing.

Elsa clutches the pillowcase so tight her knuckles are white, and she's shaking _hard_, probably because the temperature in the room has somehow plummeted again. Anna's trembling a little too, but she's not sure if it's from cold.

"Anna, please," Elsa whimpers, and Anna thinks _screw propriety_ and wraps an arm around Elsa, gathers her up and presses her head into the crook of her own neck.

"I'm right here," she says. "I've got you, I'm not going anywhere." She can't fathom _why_ knowing that would help Elsa, but she keeps saying her name, so it's the best she's got. All it does is draw another sob from Elsa, so Anna wraps her fingers in Elsa's hair and strokes her head, slow circular motions while her other hand snakes around Elsa's waist and draws her closer so she's flush against Anna's chest. The conscious, rational part of her brain thinks _This is so weird_, but the rest of her thinks that this feels like something she's done before, like something carved so deep in her muscle memory that it'd be impossible to forget.

Elsa draws in a tight, shallow breath and says her name _again_, and at this point it's just a litany of misery, the worst kind of mantra. "Anna," she says, "_Anna_, please, no, please, Anna I'm sorry I – Anna please Anna – "

"Elsa," Anna says, louder and more emphatic this time, fighting back tears herself even though she doesn't quite know why. "Elsa, wake _up_, it's just a _dream_ – "

And then there's a shuddering, startled gasp and she feels Elsa's eyelashes flutter against her neck as she opens her eyes and blinks slowly.

"Oh." Elsa's voice is quiet, smeared by sleep; she doesn't sound nearly as surprised as she should to find herself wrapped up in a stranger's arms. "Anna, you're – _oh_."

"Yeah," Anna offers, unhelpfully. "Hey."

"God, I'm sorry, I…" She makes no move to extricate herself from Anna's grip, though, just curls her fingers into the fabric of Anna's shirt and breathes hotly against her skin. "I can explain –"

"No," Anna says. "Not tonight. We don't have to talk about it, Elsa. It's okay."

"Okay," Elsa says in a small voice.

They lie there in silence for a long while, hearts beating against each other's chests in syncopated rhythms, Anna stroking Elsa's back until she calms down. Gradually, Elsa's breathing returns to normal, and then it slows down even more until she's taking the deep, even breaths that make it clear she's fallen asleep.

Asleep. Elsa's asleep. In Anna's arms. With her head nestled in the crook of Anna's neck. With one arm curled loosely around Anna's waist. The thought sets the now-familiar warmth of nostalgia blooming in her chest again.

She doesn't sleep the rest of the night, but at least now she's got something to think about while she's counting the ceiling tiles.


	7. dying for something real

A/N: ok SO 1) saw frozen 2, just want to make it clear that this story is not f2-compliant, canon for this fic stops after f1, 2) thanks for all the reviews guys, i read and appreciate every one and they always make my day!, 3) sorry for disappearing for a bit lol i wrote this and then my computer ate it and i had to rewrite :[ hope yall enjoy this chapter!

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By the time Anna's managed to quiet her racing thoughts enough to have a chance at falling asleep, the first light of the morning has begun to peek through the curtains. She groans quietly to herself (just to be dramatic); she can't even roll over and block out the light with a pillow because Elsa is still on top of her.

She's bored. She's been lying here just _thinking _for hours, and her body itches to move, to get up and do something. But then there's the comfortable weight of Elsa's head nestled under her neck, cool breath puffing out onto Anna's exposed collarbone, sending Anna's skin prickling with goosebumps when she thinks about how close Elsa's lips are to her bare body.

Elsa's bangs have fallen out of whatever magical hair product seems to hold them in place; they hang loose over her forehead, blowing up and out with each breath out of her mouth. It's _cute_. Before Anna can stop herself, she brings her hand up to brush Elsa's hair out of her face. The motion feels instinctual, like something written in muscle memory. Elsa's hair is impossibly thick, silky, and Anna trails her fingers through it once more, just to capture the feeling in her mind.

"Mmm," Elsa mumbles, stirring slightly.

Anna freezes and withdraws her hand hastily, so that Elsa's tousled bangs fall back over her eyes. She waits for a few terrified moments, but Elsa just scrunches up her nose against the strands of hair tickling her face. Gingerly, gently, Anna brushes the hair back to where it was, pausing to see if the motion woke Elsa up, but Elsa just burrows her face further into Anna's neck and lets out what sounds like a pleased, soft hum, vibrating against Anna's throat.

It sends something in Anna's heart soaring, lights her on fire until she's aching with the effort of not pulling Elsa in closer, not waking her and tilting her face up and kissing her until they're both wide-awake. She doesn't know when that became all she wanted, but now that the thought has struck her it feels like the only thing in the world that's ever mattered.

The lack of sleep must be messing with her brain.

She extricates herself from Elsa – carefully, so she doesn't wake her – and stumbles out of bed, because it seems like lying there any longer might end up being dangerous for her own sanity.

It's 6:00 AM. Ugh.

The room has a balcony (because of course it does; Elsa would settle for nothing less), so Anna grabs a blanket and settles down on the cold tile floor outside. She hasn't watched a sunrise since…well, probably since she was in high school and actually had a reason to wake up this early.

Elsa seems like she would be a morning person.

Elsa seems like she would be a lot of things, actually, things that Anna has no concrete reason to believe but that occur to her anyway. She'd be an avid reader, probably, and maybe she'd play an instrument, like piano or violin – one of the delicate, classy ones, not, like, guitar or anything like that. She'd probably drink tea over coffee. She seems like she's ridiculously smart but not in a show-off-y way, and like the kind of person who would've always been an excellent student. (Not like Anna, who – despite her choice to go to more school than necessary, in order to learn _more_ about school, in order to work in education for the rest of her life – never really got the knack of sitting quietly in a classroom and doing exactly what you're told to.) She seems like a bit of a homebody, the kind of person that has enough going on in their own little internal world that being alone is more rejuvenating than being around people could ever be. (Again, nothing like Anna.)

But most of all, Elsa seems like she would be gentle, and kind, and warm, but in a way that might not be immediately obvious to any stranger that came across her – in a way that requires some work to get to, like chipping away at a block of ice or marble until the unnecessary parts fall away to reveal something beautiful. That's more valuable, Anna thinks, than her own brand of generous (sometimes overly so) exuberance. It's like a gift, given only to a few.

Those are all just assumptions, though, of course. Just wild guesses Anna's made after a few days of cursory observation. She's always been pretty good at reading people.

A light scraping sound from behind her snaps her out of her thoughts, and she turns around to see Elsa pushing back the sliding-glass door to the balcony, rubbing her eyes and offering Anna a groggy smile.

"You're up early," Elsa says. Her voice is husky and low from sleep, and it sends chills down Anna's spine. "What's the occasion?"

"Just woke up and couldn't fall back asleep," Anna says. "Wanna join me out here?"

"In a minute. Would you like some coffee?"

"Coffee would be perfect." She hears Elsa step back inside and putter around with the coffeemaker on the desk. "Hey, I have kind of a random question for you."

"Mmm?"

"Are you more of a coffee or tea person?"

"I prefer tea." Elsa hands her a steaming cup and sits next to her. Anna doesn't miss the careful distance she maintains between their bodies. Guess it'll be up to her to close it. "But they didn't have any, so this is the next best thing."

They sit in comfortable silence, watching the early-morning sun paint the sky with light, breathing in air that smells like summer and dewdrops and the lake. Elsa blows on her coffee and takes slow, steady sips; Anna gets ahead of herself and gulps down a mouthful before realizing it's _piping hot_, and then sheepishly mutters "burned my tongue" when Elsa gives her a concerned look, which quickly turns into a fond, warm smile.

"It's kind of chilly out here," Anna says. She holds up the end of her blanket that isn't wrapped around her. "You want in?"

"Oh, I don't really get cold," Elsa says, but she scoots in closer anyway, and Anna moves so that their hips are pressed together, just slightly enough that it's not _weird_ but definitively enough that she can relish the feeling of Elsa's leg against hers. She's suddenly very aware of how the hem of Elsa's nightgown has hitched up a little, so that her calves are exposed and bare against Anna's skin.

"What do you mean, you don't get cold?"

"I mean exactly that."

"So you're, like, one of those boys that goes out in winter wearing just basketball shorts and a hoodie."

"What?" Elsa giggles. "I don't know what you're talking about. And I don't own basketball shorts."

"Really? Seems like it'd be your thing."

Elsa rolls her eyes and runs a hand through her hair, brushing the bangs back until they're perfectly set in place. Anna watches the motion hungrily and hopes she isn't being too obvious about it.

"Did you sleep okay?" Anna says. It's a thinly-veiled opening for Elsa to talk about…whatever it was that happened last night, if she wants to, but still vague enough that she can just blow it off with a noncommittal answer if she chooses. Anna doesn't want to push or pry, and she gets the sense that Elsa wouldn't respond well to that anyway, that Elsa's the kind of person who tells people exactly what she wants to and nothing more.

An irrational part of her wants to be a person Elsa confides in; the rest of her knows she's being naïve to think Elsa has any reason to trust her with any level of personal revelation.

"For the most part," Elsa says. Her voice is flat, but strained, like it's an effort to keep it that way. "Strange dreams, but that's typical. What about you?"

Oh. Okay. So she doesn't want to talk about it after all. That's okay, if a little disappointing, which it shouldn't be, because Anna has no right to expect anything.

"I didn't really sleep much," she admits. "I woke up in the middle of the night, and I just – I dunno, I was just thinking about too many things, I guess."

"I understand," Elsa says, quietly. "I usually have trouble sleeping through the night."

"You – wait, what? Usually? Like, often?"

"Often." Elsa's gaze has dropped to her lap, and she's doing that thing again, rubbing her hands together like there's an itch she can't scratch. "Most nights."

Anna summons whatever courage she has and says, "Elsa, do you – do you remember last night?"

There's a pause during which all she can hear is Elsa's slow, measured breaths, and she takes the opportunity to rest her hands on top of Elsa's – Anna's noticed that her anxious handwringing gets worse the more nervous she gets, and she wishes there was a more effective way for her to say _hey, it's okay, I'm here_, but for now, she'll settle for circling her thumbs across Elsa's palms until her hands still.

"Yes," Elsa says, quiet and low. "I don't really know what to say. I'm sorry you had to see that."

"Hey." Anna laces their fingers together and gives Elsa a weak smile. "Don't be sorry. It wasn't a big deal. I was just…kind of worried. You seemed like you were having, like, a _really _bad dream."

"I was," Elsa mutters, in a small voice that makes Anna want to wrap her arms around her. "There's…a lot I've been through that I would rather forget." She looks up with a rueful smile. "Apparently my brain has other ideas."

"Oh, Elsa," Anna says, because it's all she can think to say. "Is it always like that? Like, most nights?"

"Last night was especially bad." She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and leans her forehead against Anna's shoulder, and Anna snakes an arm around her back. "Thank you. For…you know. Being there."

"Hey, next time you have a nightmare, you know who to call," Anna jokes. "But seriously, Elsa, if you wanted to talk about it or something, you could, you know."

"I'm not really one for talking about things."

"Yeah, I know. But…maybe if it's taking up this much headspace, it's something you might wanna, like, acknowledge? I don't know. I don't know your life. I'm probably overstepping. Just – I feel like nothing good ever comes from ignoring things." Elsa doesn't say anything. She takes it as a sign to continue. "Does it have anything to do with that girl you were talking about yesterday?"

"What girl?"

"The one you said was on your mind. With the, y'know, breakup situation." She wonders if she should ask why Elsa was saying her name, who this other _Anna_ is, or if it is, in fact, her.

"Oh." Elsa's silent for a long while before she speaks again, and Anna has to resist the temptation to fill the emptiness with babbling. "Yes, I…think so. I don't remember, exactly."

Should she ask? Should she bring it up? Maybe Elsa doesn't even know what she was saying, maybe she doesn't remember that she was saying anything. Would bringing it up embarrass her, or make her feel awkward? It'd definitely make Anna feel awkward, if it was her. Honestly, maybe it wasn't even actually _her_ name, maybe it was someone else – after all, it hadn't been exactly the same name. Elsa had pronounced it a bit differently, and she'd said it with a weight that wasn't quite present with Anna. So it was probably someone else. A different Anna.

So then why had it sounded so familiar?

She has to _know_, and once Anna has a thought, it's a futile exercise trying to stop it from leaving the station. So she blurts out, all too quickly, "You were saying my name."

Elsa stiffens. "What?"

"Um. When you were asleep. You kept, um, saying my name?" She immediately regrets bringing it up, because Elsa has gone perfectly, terrifyingly still under her arm, but it's too late to backtrack now. "Or, well, I guess maybe it wasn't _my_ name, you were saying it a little different, I just kind of assumed it was me because I was there. Which, in hindsight, why would it have been me, you barely know me. That's dumb. But, anyway, I thought –"

"It was someone else," Elsa mutters. Her response comes almost too quickly, without a second thought, something thrown hastily into the conversation so they can stop talking about it. "It wasn't you."

"Oh. Right, yeah. Makes sense. That's what I – that's what I figured." She's not sure what gives her the sense that Elsa's not being totally honest, or why her heart sinks in disappointment. "I was just wondering."

Anna shifts, and the neckline of her oversized sleep shirt slides over just enough to expose a bit more of her shoulder, so that she can feel Elsa's eyelashes flutter against her skin when she closes her eyes. She shivers, and it's not from the slight morning chill.

"Would you mind if we talked about something else for now?" Elsa mumbles.

"Sure." She doesn't have the heart to push this conversation right now. Or ever, really. "Like what?"

"I don't care. Anything." Elsa looks up at her with a weak smile. "What do you want to do today?"

xxx

Four hours later, after an enormous room service breakfast that Elsa orders after Anna makes a passing comment about being hungry ("You said you wanted waffles," Elsa says innocently, at Anna's look of shock when a maid wheels up a cart full of silver trays. "They were on the menu."), they end up in line for Maid of the Mist.

"You know we don't just have to do things _I _want, right?" Anna says, as Elsa tugs on a plastic poncho that looks bizarrely out of place on her regal frame.

"It's _your_ spontaneous sorry-about-your-broken-engagement trip, not mine." She smiles sheepishly when Anna responds with a chortle. "Sorry. Too soon?"

"I think wedding jokes are fair game."

Elsa's managed to tangle herself hopelessly in her poncho, and Anna has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the way Elsa scowls down at herself in frustration. She lets Elsa struggle with the garment for a few moments longer before deciding to take pity on her. "Here, let me help," she says, straightening the poncho out and smoothing down the plastic with her palms. "There you go. You had it on backwards."

"I feel ridiculous," Elsa grumbles.

Anna reaches up and pulls the hood of the poncho tight over Elsa's head before she can protest. "Well, now you _look_ ridiculous too."

When it's their turn to board the boat – in a single file line, with Elsa standing behind her – Anna feels the faintest pressure brush against her knuckles, and glances back to see Elsa's fingers flexing ineffectually toward her hand. She smiles and laces their fingers together, and Elsa squeezes tight.

"Scared?" Anna says, only half-joking. Elsa seems to have a lot of fears.

"What? No!" Elsa says. "No, not – not exactly. Well, maybe. A little. I don't know. I suppose. Just not too keen on…ships." She takes a deep breath. "I'm rambling. You're turning me into you."

Anna snorts. "You wish."

Elsa manages a nervous laugh. Anna steps over the threshold where the end of the dock meets the boat, and the deck bobs a little in the water under her weight. She reaches out to Elsa and takes her hand with an exaggerated bow, like a fancy butler, and Elsa giggles before straightening and saying, "Why, thank you, ma'am," in a voice Anna's never heard her use before.

"Whoa, what was _that_?" Anna says.

"What was what?"

"For a second there you were, like, a whole different person! It was kind of scary."

"Oh, you mean like this?" Elsa clears her throat and then draws herself so she's standing unnaturally straight again, with her shoulders back, and her features settled in an unrecognizable haughty stare, one eyebrow quirked. "You were saying?"

"Jesus!" Anna squeaks, and Elsa's composure collapses as she shoots Anna a sheepish green. "Don't do that!"

"Not a fan?" Elsa says, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.

"I kind of hate it, but I kind of love it. If I didn't already know you and you talked to me like that, I'd be terrified of you."

Elsa smirks. "A few days was enough time to get to know me well enough to see right through that act, huh?"

Anna hums an affirmation. They're still holding hands, she realizes, and she tightens her grip around Elsa's to make sure she doesn't lose her in the throng of tourists onboard (well, that's a plausible enough excuse, anyway; the real reason has more to do with the comfortable pressure of Elsa's skin against hers, and the way it makes her mouth feel suddenly way too dry).

"C'mon," Anna says, pulling Elsa along with her as she squeezes her way through the crowd. "We gotta get to a good spot!"

They make their way to the prow of the boat, where they have the best view of the water and the highest chance of getting absolutely soaked by the seaspray (well, lake-spray, really) coming from the falls – that's always been Anna's favorite part. She grabs the railing, climbs up onto the ledge so she can really lean into the mist and the cool lake air, closes her eyes and turns her face, up, and –

"Anna!"

There's a firm pressure around her waist, tugging her back and off the ledge. She opens her eyes and turns around to see Elsa frowning down at her. "What?" Anna asks innocently.

"That's not safe!" Elsa splutters. "What if you fall?"

"Um, I don't know. You catch me?"

Elsa gives her a stricken look. Anna rolls her eyes.

"Okay, your concern is really sweet and all, but come on, I'm not gonna fall." When Elsa continues to look unconvinced, she says, "Seriously, the railing comes up to, like, my chest."

"Hm."

"_Hm_," Anna parrots.

Elsa's stern expression breaks, finally, with a small smile. "Are you making fun of me?"

"Maybe," Anna says. "Are you gonna do anything about it?"

"No," Elsa mumbles.

Elsa's hands are still resting lightly on Anna's hips. The realization sends a jolt of electricity through her, makes her skin feel like it's burning where Elsa's touching her even through the layers of her clothing and the plastic of her poncho. She finds herself imagining what Elsa's grip would feel like if it was just a little bit firmer, just a little tighter, if Elsa grabbed her by the waist and pulled her in and –

And maybe the heat in her gaze is just a little too obvious, because Elsa drops her hands like she's been shocked, like the static between them has built and built until it was too much for Elsa to withstand.

There's a loud blast from a horn somewhere and then the boat's moving. Anna turns back to the railing and rests her elbows against the cold metal. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Elsa move to join her, leaning against the railing next to her, just _centimeters_ away. Once again, it's up to Anna to close the distance.

So she does. She scoots over just a bit until their shoulders touch; she doesn't even bother trying to make the movement seem casual, because come _on_, at this point it's embarrassingly obvious that Elsa wants her closer and just doesn't know how to get them to that point herself.

"You confuse me," Anna says.

"You've said that enough already," Elsa replies, "but what have I done this time?"

"Earlier, when we were getting on, you said you, like, don't like ships? Or something like that."

"Oh, that. I just got a little spooked when we were getting on. It was nothing, really."

Anna fixes her with a serious look. "Okay, but it doesn't _have_ to be nothing. I mean, you could've told me you didn't want to do this, and it would've been totally fine. You knew this was a boat ride, right? Wait – oh, God, I told you this was gonna be a boat ride, right? 'Cause if not, I am so sorry –"

"No, no, you told me." Elsa smiles.

"Oh. Good." Anna pauses for a moment just to take in the way Elsa's looking at her, taking her in like she's something precious, something to be savored. "Well, anyway. I guess I just don't get why you keep…being so nice to me. You don't like being on boats and here you are on a boat. This morning you got me this crazy room service breakfast for basically no reason. You're pretty much orchestrating this whole insane road trip for me." She bites her lip, suddenly self-conscious about how much she's talking. "I mean, not that I'm complaining. Just, I can't remember the last time anyone did anything like this just for me."

Elsa tilts her head, studying Anna's face with something a little more searching than just curiosity.

"Wait, wow, that came out sounding a lot more dramatic than I meant it to," Anna says, with a breathless laugh. "People are nice to me. That's not what I meant. It's just, with you, you're so – I don't know, amazing, I guess, is a good word? And I'm just like, jeez, why _me_?" She worries a lock of her hair between her fingers and looks nervously up at Elsa. "Sorry. That was a lot more words than I intended."

Elsa takes Anna's hand in her own and weaves their fingers together, which – wow, _that's_ a first. She rubs her thumb over Anna's knuckles, staring down at their joined hands for so long that for a moment Anna's not sure if she's going to reply at all. But then, finally, she takes a deep breath in and looks up to meet Anna's gaze.

"I really like you, Anna," Elsa says. Her voice is quiet, so quiet that the sound of the crashing falls should have drowned it out, but Anna's mind zeroes in on Elsa's words until they seem to echo in her brain, over and over again, a mantra that feels like it _means_ so much more than what was actually said.

_I really like you, Anna_.

The tone and timbre of Elsa's voice, the color of her eyes as they reflect the blue sky above, the way she worries her lip between her bottom teeth – the threads all weave together somewhere in Anna's mind, like pieces of a tapestry that won't make sense until she can see the whole thing, until, suddenly, out of nowhere, she's left with a sense of déjà vu so powerful it makes her want to close her eyes and shut the world out until it goes away.

Her head hurts. The space behind her eyes throbs. Her vision swims.

_I really like you, Anna_.

She blinks, but it feels like her eyes are closed for much longer than just that millisecond, and she sees – it doesn't make any sense, but for a second, she sees – Elsa, but _different_, dressed differently and with a much freer smile, waving her hands around in gestures that look almost like dancing, and then she blinks again and there's a much younger blonde girl who Anna doesn't really recognize, and then –

"Anna? Are you alright?"

She blinks again and shakes her head hard, just for good measure. The dark spots at the edges of her vision fade, and with them, her headache. She's back on the boat, back with Elsa standing in front of her, looking concerned.

"Um, yeah," Anna says, even though she has no _idea_ whether she's actually alright or not. "Just…spaced out for a second there, sorry. What were you saying?"

Elsa just clears her throat nervously. "N-nothing."

"Something about how you like me?"

"…Something like that."

Maybe it's the shy smile Elsa gives her, maybe it's the way her hand trembles ever so slightly in Anna's, maybe it's the fact that whatever episode Anna just had is making her a little delirious, but she's feeling _bold_, so she tilts her face up until her mouth is right next to Elsa's ear.

"I really like you too," she whispers, and she _swears_ she sees Elsa shiver from the way her nose bumps against the shell of Elsa's ear. And maybe she lingers there for just a little bit too long, maybe she leans her forehead against Elsa's face for no reason other than to touch, maybe she just wants to be as close as possible just to imagine what it'd be like to brush her lips over the skin behind Elsa's ear, to open her mouth and have a taste.

It's all _way_ too much. If she's not careful, she's going to do something dumb.

But Anna's never really been one for, well, thinking, or impulse control, or not doing dumb things just because she wants to. So she draws in a shuddering breath, and leaves a slow, soft kiss on Elsa's cheek – not long enough to be _weird_, but enough that Elsa _has_ to be able to pick up on the desire that lurks underneath the surface of the gesture.

Elsa gasps, and Anna pulls away before she can do anything else without thinking.

Oh, God, did she cross a line? She definitely did. She definitely should not have done that. She was engaged literally days ago, and now she's weirded out possibly her only ally in this right now, and Elsa's gonna drive her back to Cleveland as fast as she possibly can and dump her at her parents' house and she'll never talk to Anna again.

But then Elsa turns to look at her, her fingertips brushing against the spot where Anna's lips had been, and her expression is – it's not bad, really, it's more a look of awe than disgust or anger. Anna gives her a tentative smile, and Elsa returns it.

"What was that for?" Elsa says.

"I don't know. Just – you, I guess."

"Me?" Elsa giggles, and Anna breathes out a sigh of relief. It's okay. It's all good. She didn't ruin things.

"Yeah. Just, you know, you being you."

"Okay," Elsa says. "I suppose I'll just have to…keep being me, then."

xxx

When they get back to the hotel, Anna can tell things have changed between them. She can _feel_ it, in the way the air separating them seems to crackle and spark with something _more_.

And also because Elsa's acting kind of weird. Nothing overt, just – a little stiff, a little more reserved. One step forward, two steps back.

"Ooh, I need a shower and a nap." Anna follows Elsa into her room without a second thought before realizing that she does, in fact, have a room of her _own_. "Oh, um, sorry," she says, pausing awkwardly in the doorway. "I can go do that in my room."

Elsa watches her fumble with the doorknob as she leaves. Just as the door's swinging shut, she says, "Wait!", and Anna sticks her foot in the doorway _way_ too hastily to pretend she hadn't been waiting for Elsa to call her back in.

"If you want," Elsa says, her hands fiddling with the end of her braid, "you could just…do all that in here. I need to go out and run some errands anyway. Get a few…things. So. I don't mind if you just stay in here. If you want."

"If you say so," Anna says, but she's already back in the room and shutting the door. She's not sure why, but the prospect of using this room like it's her own makes her giddy. "You sure you don't mind?"

"I really don't." Elsa rummages around in her purse for a bit, knocking bits of paper and business cards out in the process, and finally emerges with a spare keycard. "Here. In case you need to leave and get back in."

When Anna takes the card, their fingers touch, and Elsa pulls back like she's been burned. The abruptness of the motion startles Anna and stings a little bit, but it makes sense. She was a little too forward on the boat. She gets it. She can back off.

"I won't be long," Elsa says with a weak smile, and then she's gone.

xxx

Anna takes the longest shower she's had in a _while_, most of which is spent ugly-crying on the hard tile floor.

She's not _sad_, exactly, or at least she doesn't think so. Just…raw. Fragile. So much has been _happening_, and now there's Elsa, and suddenly the relationship she's spent the better half of the past decade on has dissolved into nothing and it doesn't even _bother_ her anymore, and she hasn't seen her family in forever, and she literally just met Elsa like two days ago and she's already fucking obsessed with her.

Her thoughts spiral out around her and they all seem to loop around themselves and come back to Elsa. _Elsa_. What the hell was that back on the boat, anyway? Is Elsa…mad at her now? Or just weirded out?

It doesn't help that conversations with Elsa seem to go in circles with no real conclusions, like the soap suds Anna watches spin around the drain before being washed away. The thought that Elsa's pushing her away in any capacity is untenable, somehow, and she doesn't want to think about it but it pushes its way into her thoughts anyway, curls into her heart and leaves her feeling cold.

She turns the temperature of the water up until it's scalding.

When Anna gets out, a good half-hour later, the cold air-conditioned air hits her dripping skin and leaves her shivering, even with a fluffy white towel wrapped around her. _Elsa keeps it so damn freezing in here_.

She throws on the clothes she had on before (they're not too gross – the poncho kept them dry, mostly) and towels her hair dry before belly-flopping onto the absurdly large bed. Now for a nap, and then Elsa will be back, and then she can get back to trying to figure out what…all of_ this_ is, what it all means.

But she needs sleep before she can do that.

So of course it conveniently eludes her. She tosses and turns for – well, only for, like, five minutes, really, but she's usually _such_ a good sleeper. It's only been the past few days that she's been having trouble falling asleep. (The fact that the common denominator there is Elsa's arrival in her life is not lost on her).

TV. Anna needs TV, a distraction, something to think about other than the endless news ticker of _Elsa Elsa Elsa what's going on with Elsa where's Elsa I miss Elsa Elsa Elsa Elsa_ scrolling through her mind. Her eyes still closed, she feels around blindly on the side-table closest to her for the remote, until her hand closes around something and she pulls and then –

\- and then promptly hears a million things crash to the ground off the table.

"Shit!" she hisses. Of course it wasn't enough to be invading Elsa's personal space and maybe-probably weirding her out by kissing her. Now Anna's destroying her belongings, too. "Shit, shit."

She leaps out of bed to inspect the damage and breathes a sigh of relief when she sees that it was just a stack of books that fell, and that none of them look particularly worse for the wear. So that's good.

There's no single theme unifying the books, but they're all so very _Elsa_ that it makes Anna smile when she glances at each of the titles as she picks them up. _A Brief History of Time_. _Capital in the Twenty-First Century_ (Anna's bored by it just skimming the blurb on the back cover). Something about medicine and mortality. A Sudoku book that looks mostly completed, based on Anna's cursory flip-through. And – is that _Game of Thrones_?

It's definitely _Game of Thrones_. Nerd.

Anna leaves the books stacked neatly on the side-table, just the way they were. The little glimpse into Elsa's psyche leaves a stupid, dopey smile on her face. It's the mental image of Elsa frowning over a Sudoku puzzle, or staying up late to get through another chapter of _Game of Thrones_. It humanizes her.

She's missed something in her clean-up effort, she realizes: a sheet of paper, folded in half, that must have floated out of one of the books as it fell. When she kneels to pick it up, she can see rough lines of pencil through the fold. It looks like a sketch of something.

It would be so easy to unfold it and just take a peek.

An invasion of privacy, sure. But – it's Elsa, and suddenly Anna _needs_ to know what it is, needs to know what Elsa's doodling in her spare time.

It only takes her a second to decide. Curiosity overtakes her, and she unfolds the paper.

She was right – it's a sketch. A drawing of a building, or a castle, really, with lots of high towers and pointed roofs and other architectural terminology that Anna doesn't know. The lines of it are rough, loose – it must have been something Elsa did in a hurry, or maybe something drawn while absently doodling, but it's incredible nonetheless. Elsa's drawn in even the most intricate details, including crests on the outside walls and little flags flying from the ramparts and the highest towers, decorated with what looks – crocuses, maybe? (Anna's not sure how she knows that, but the word floats to the forefront of her mind and then she's sure it's accurate).

It's beautiful.

And Anna's going crazy. She's losing her mind. She has to be. Stress has made her delirious and she's officially lost it. Because whatever this place is, whether it's somewhere real or just a sketch from Elsa's imagination, it looks _familiar_.

It looks and feels like _somewhere she's been_.

Which is insane. Which is absurd. She's never been to any castles that she can remember, she's never even left the continent, and she'd definitely remember something like _this_.

Her head hurts again. It pounds, and her ears are ringing. She thinks she might pass out. Elsa's going to find her here, slumped on the floor, still holding this drawing like a weirdo.

"Anna?"

Shit! Shit. She must not have heard the door open. "Um, hey! B-back so soon?"

Great. Way to not sound suspicious.

"Oh, there you are. I couldn't see you from the door. Thought you ran away." Elsa rounds the bed so that she's standing right next to Anna. "What's that?"

Well, there's no point trying to hide anything now. "Oh, uh – funny story. I accidentally knocked, like, all your books off that shelf trying to find the TV remote – lot of interesting stuff there, by the way, you must be really smart to be reading all that – and, uh, this fell out." She waves the drawing in the air weakly. "And I caught a glimpse of it and it kind of looked familiar? Like, it looked like somewhere I've been, or maybe just seen in a movie or something. So I was just looking at it and trying to figure it out. Sorry."

Elsa stares at her for a long while, with an unreadable expression, before kneeling on the floor next to her. "May I?" she says, taking the drawing from Anna. She smooths out the creases and looks down at it with something that looks like – longing, or wistfulness.

"What is it?" Anna asks, tentatively.

"You remember I told you I don't remember much about where my family is from?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Well, this is – something from there. From…I suppose I could call it my home country. One of the few things I do remember." Elsa's voice is soft, and she sounds so tender and fragile as she speaks that Anna feels like she's intruding on a private moment.

"I didn't know you could draw," Anna says, just to fill the silence. "You're a really good artist."

"Thank you." Elsa doesn't smile – she's still looking down at the sketch. "It's just something I do to fill my time, when I'm bored or anxious. A nervous habit, really."

"So, um, this is an actual place, then? In…Europe, right?"

"Yes," Elsa says. Her voice sounds distant, far away. "It's a real place."

"Hm. I wonder why it looks so familiar, then."

"You must have seen it in a picture or a movie or something." Elsa stands abruptly, then, dropping the paper into Anna's lap. "You can keep that, if you want. Maybe it'll jog your memory."

Anna folds the paper up and slips it into her pocket. Something in Elsa's eyes has unsettled her – she looks a little wild, a little manic, and she's wringing her hands together absently. Anna wants to wrap her arms around her and hold her until whatever's bothering her doesn't matter anymore. She clambers up onto the bed and pats the spot next to her.

"Hey," Anna says. "Come sit."

Elsa does. "Did you take your nap?"

"Ugh, no." She scoots over the sheets until she's close enough to lean her head against Elsa shoulder; when she does, she waits to hear the sharp intake of breath or to feel the stiffening that means Elsa's pulling away from her. But it never comes, so she relaxes into Elsa's side. "My brain is just, like, too busy to sleep. Do you ever get like that?"

Elsa chuckles ruefully. "All the time."

"It feels like there's just…so much _stuff_ in there. Like my skull's swollen with thoughts or something. Wish I could stick a valve in there and drain 'em out so I don't have to think about as much."

"That's a bit morbid, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Anna laughs. "When I was little, I used to have to go to the hospital pretty often because I'd get fluid in my lungs, like, all the time – no, don't worry, I'm fine _now_ – just when I was little I used to have a lot of problems with my heart and my lungs so I'd get pneumonia and things like that all the time. Anyway, I'd go to the hospital and they would stick a tube in my lungs to drain the fluid. That's what I meant."

Elsa leans her head into Anna's, the tip of her nose nestled in Anna's hair so that she can feel it when Elsa exhales. "What's wrong with your heart?"

"Y'know, what's weird is they never actually figured it out. It just kind of stopped as I got older." She shrugs. "Haven't had any issues for a while now."

"That's odd," Elsa mutters.

They sit like that for a long while, just leaning into each other, and Anna itches to fill the silence with _sorry I kissed you _or _I want to kiss you for real_ or anything, really, but Elsa seems to be content just being there, so Anna supposes she can be, too.

Her head still hurts, a little. It's a dull, distant throb now, which she can handle – it doesn't bowl her over and send her reeling like it did on the boat, or when she was looking at the sketch. The steady rhythm of Elsa's breathing against her has apparently calmed the raging tide of her thoughts, and she finds her eyes drooping shut, finally.

Maybe she's fallen asleep, and she's dreaming now, but she _swears_ she feels Elsa press a kiss to the top of her head, so gentle and feather-light that it might as well not have happened.

Her head doesn't hurt as bad, after that.


	8. moth to your flame

The silence between them is perfect, Anna thinks. Of course, there's the weight of everything that's gone unspoken in the past few hours, everything Anna's wanted to say and ask but can't, but it's less a burden weighing them down and more like…a comfortable pressure, like that of a weighted blanket.

It has to end sometime, though, and it does when Elsa stretches, cat-like, and taps Anna's nose with one finger in a gesture that should be too affectionate for how long they've known each other but isn't, somehow.

"I have something for you," Elsa says. When she separates herself from Anna, Anna feels the absence acutely, the sting of winter air hitting your face when you first step out into the cold.

(She tries not to be _too_ obvious about how her eyes follow Elsa as she makes her way to the desk, but the way Elsa's delicate hands work in her hair when she fixes her braid is too mesmerizing not to watch, so.)

"What is it?" Anna asks. "You got me something?"

Elsa fiddles with a bag under the desk. There's a sound of plastic crinkling and unwrapping, and then she joins Anna on the bed again and hands her a little snow-globe, a gorgeous, intricate thing that seems way too nice to have been found in any of the kitschy tourist shops in the area. Anna takes it with a badly-hidden squeal of delight – the tchotchke is adorable, but adorable-r still is Elsa's plainly apparent nervousness about presenting Anna with even this small of a gift.

"I saw it while I was getting gas," Elsa says, pulling at the tips of her fingers, "and it made me think of you. So – just – I made a bit of an impulse purchase of it."

Anna cradles it in her hands. "Why'd it make you think of me?"

"What?" Elsa gives her a deer-in-headlights look, clearly not having anticipated having to answer this question. "Oh, uh – well, look at it, it's beautiful." The tips of Elsa's ears redden. "I mean – it's beautiful…ly…crafted. It's –"

"I love it," Anna says. Elsa's ears grow redder still. "Thank you." She considers trying her luck again, surging into Elsa's arms and planting another kiss on her cheek, but if Elsa's _this_ obviously flustered already, Anna thinks she might spontaneously combust at actual contact.

But the expression she's wearing is so earnest, so open, so guileless. If heartstrings were a real thing, Elsa already has Anna's wound tight, and has mastered the art of plucking them like a lute.

"I'm gonna keep this forever," Anna declares, clutching the snowglobe to her chest as melodramatically as she can.

"Really? Forever?" The tension in Elsa's shoulders visibly unwinds a bit now that the conversation's taken a turn for the less serious. Mission accomplished. "That's a long time. My gut tells me you'll lose it as soon as we check out of this hotel."

"Um, _no_. I love little trinkets like this! Especially from traveling. They're like…portable memories."

Elsa pauses her fidgeting to look over and into Anna's eyes. "And what memory will this little snow-globe hold for you?"

The question feels like it's set up to garner a very specific response. Anna sets the snow-globe down in her lap and uses her freed hand to brush a stray hair from Elsa's face; she tucks it behind Elsa's ear, then runs her thumb down her temple, her cheek, her jaw, the touch so feather-light she's not sure Elsa can even feel it.

"You," she says simply. She throws in a wink just for good measure.

"Me?"

"Yeah, _you_." She's in _this_ deep already; why not dig herself a little further into the hole? "I don't wanna forget you, Elsa."

Elsa draws her bottom lip into her mouth just a little bit, and Anna can see a sliver of white teeth biting down, worrying it. The tip of an incisor, sharp and neat; she wonders what that would feel like against her own mouth, against _her_ skin – on her neck, her collarbone.

"So I guess that means I owe you a souvenir too," Anna says, mostly just to distract herself from imagining Elsa's mouth trailing down her – nope, that's exactly the line of thinking she should be _avoiding_ – "Can't have you forgetting me, y'know, after all this is over."

"You don't have to worry about that." Elsa smiles at her, small and sweet and tender. "I don't need a souvenir to remember you by." She coughs, unconvincingly, and lets her gaze drop to her hands, like she only just realized what she said.

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I know," Anna says, because she does, it's obvious, and _wow_ when did it get so hot in here? "But I wanna hear you say it."

"Well, you know. You're just – you're – _you._" Suddenly, Elsa's voice is just barely above a whisper, low and husky."Unforgettable all on your own."

Elsa's tongue darts out to wet her lips, and – is Anna imagining it, or did her gaze just flicker down to Anna's mouth for a moment?

She wants to believe it did.

It feels like something bigger than her has taken over her body, her heart, because what else could be behind the heat flowing like lava through her veins, what else could be causing her eyelids to flutter almost shut, why else would she be leaning in –

"Housekeeping!"

A sharp rap at the door and a stern female voice, and Anna is snapped out of whatever spell she was under, forced rudely and abruptly back to reality. Elsa jerks back, her eyebrows knit together in something that looks like – shock? Surprise? – and scrambles off the bed and to the door. She says something to the maid, but Anna isn't really paying attention.

The maid leaves, and Elsa shuts the door. "What do you want to do for dinner?" she says, and just like that, the moment is over, a book snapped shut without so much as a bookmark or a dog-ear to denote where they left off.

Anna tries not to make her disappointment too obvious.

xxx

They eat at a Chinese place, a little hole-in-the-wall type joint that Anna had been to with her family on their last trip here. Anna shows Elsa how to use chopsticks, and tries not to laugh too hard at her when she completely fails to pick up any food with them.

"Fortune cookies! My favorite part," Anna says when they're done with their meal. She cracks hers open while Elsa watches with childlike eagerness. "I used to save my fortunes and put them in scrapbooks if I liked them enough."

"Do they ever come true?" Elsa smiles.

"Sometimes." Anna winks. "Okay, mine says…'A very attractive person has a message for you.'"

Elsa chokes on her drink. "I'm sorry, _what?_"

"Well, let's hear it, Elsa, come on!"

"Hear what?"

"Your message for me!"

Elsa blushes and stammers. "Oh, very smooth. I…that was good, I'll give you that. You had to have planned that somehow."

"Nope. That's fate talking right there."

More than anything – more than how gorgeous Elsa is, or how kind she is, or the inexplicable pull Anna feels to her – Anna is struck by how much _fun_ she's been having when she's around Elsa, how being around her seems to salve all the little holes in her heart until she feels okay just existing as herself. Part of it reminds her how things had been with Johnny at the very beginning, with the butterflies, and the laughter, and the easy conversation that turns into quickening heartbeats, but it's something _else_, too. It's the steady warmth of trust, of safety.

Her whole life, it's felt like a piece of her has been flitting around anxiously, like a bee from flower to flower, saying _please know me, please love me, please don't leave me. _Sitting here, giggling with Elsa over chopsticks and fortune cookies, seems to settle that part of her that even a six-year relationship couldn't calm.

"What does yours say?"

"I don't know, I'm a little scared to open it," Elsa mumbles around a mouthful of Anna's cookie (she'd stolen half when Anna wasn't looking).

"Ooh, superstitious."

"I am _not_ superstitious."

"Okay. So open your cookie."

"Fine," Elsa grumbles. "'A short stranger will soon enter your life with blessings to share.'" She laughs. "Well, that one's frighteningly accurate, actually."

"Wait, how?" Anna asks.

Elsa raises an eyebrow at her.

"What – you don't mean _me_, right?" she says, indignant. "I'm not that short!"

"You're the short stranger," Elsa says solemnly, dodging a balled-up straw wrapper than Anna pelts at her.

"You're, like, two inches taller than me, tops!"

"You're my short stranger, bringing blessings into my life. And I have five inches on you, easily."

Anna grumbles, but she can't argue. "Let's get more," she says, and Elsa nods, grinning. "I wanna learn more about our futures."

"Speak for yourself," Elsa replies. "I just want to eat more cookies."

xxx

The evening air is pleasantly warm on their walk back to the hotel: a little humid, but a steady breeze blows against the drops of sweat on Anna's skin, cooling her down. The smells of summer – barbeque smoke and mowed grass, mostly – set her nerves buzzing.

"Do you like to dance?" Anna asks.

"No."

The response comes so swiftly that it makes Anna laugh. "_Never?_"

Elsa responds with a firm shake of the head.

"Make sense, I guess. I can't really picture you, like, going out to a club or anything."

"No," Elsa says, "definitely not my thing."

Anna sighs, wistful and dramatic. "God, something about tonight just makes me wanna go _out_, y'know?"

"'Out'. As in out to dance?"

"Yeah!" Anna meets Elsa's alarmed expression with an enthusiastic grin. "I mean, I'm single for the first time since literally high school, it's a beautiful night, we're hot and available – well, I am now, I guess I don't really know about you – so why not?"

"Hot…and…available...?" Elsa says slowly, sounding the words out with caution like she's trying them on for size, not completely sold on them.

"Okay, maybe the available part doesn't matter," she says. "It's not like I'm gonna be trying to pick anyone up or anything." The idea of it – her, cruising for guys at some Niagara Falls tourist-trap of a bar while Elsa acts as a wingwoman – makes her giggle. Primarily because it's patently ridiculous, but also because she can't imagine having eyes for anyone else while Elsa's around her looking like _that_. "I think I just kind of wanna feel, y'know, young and free for a night. Or something like that."

They reach the hotel, and Elsa holds the door open for Anna with a smile and an exaggeratedly chivalrous bow. "You know, you've just said a lot of words without actually saying anything at all."

Anna laughs. "Yeah, I do that, sorry. I like to think while I talk."

The elevator reaches their floor with a _ding_, and Anna follows Elsa into her room without even thinking about it. It's funny – the only thing she's been using her room for is storing her one bag. She wonders if she'll actually sleep in it tonight or if they will, once again, find some excuse to share Elsa's room.

Stupidly, she finds herself hoping they will.

"Sooooo?" Anna says, drawing out the word and fluttering her eyelashes at Elsa. (Hey, it always worked when trying to get what she wanted from Johnny, so it's worth a shot.) "Will you go out with me?" She blushes when she realizes what she's said. "Um, as in, out to a bar. Obviously."

Elsa just rolls her eyes. "Is it even worth putting up a fight at this point?"

"Nope!" she chirps, collapsing on her back on Elsa's bed. "I'm pretty persuasive."

"I think this says less about your powers of persuasion and more about me not having a spine."

"Aw, don't be like that. It'll be fun, I promise."

"Anna, I haven't been _dancing_ in – in –" Elsa stammers and waves her hands ineffectually. "I can't even remember the last time, it's been _that_ long."

"Well, that just means you're due for it, then."

Elsa gives her a comically pathetic, pleading look. "I don't know how!"

"Sure you do! Everyone does!" She reaches her hand out, and to her surprise, Elsa takes it. "Plus, everyone's drunk anyway, so it doesn't matter if you look stupid."

"How reassuring," Elsa mutters acidly.

Anna rolls over so she's on her stomach and looking up at Elsa, who's perched on the edge of the bed next to her. "Look, if you _really _don't want to, that's fine. I just have a hard time believing you wouldn't have fun. Didn't you ever, like, go bar-hopping or anything in college?"

"No, I didn't," Elsa mutters.

"Really?"

Elsa fixes her with a tired look. "Do I strike you as the bar-hopping type?"

"Well, no. But also, you're so…" She gestures at Elsa's face and body and, well, everything, in an effort to convey _you are an absolute goddess _without actually having to say it.

"I'm so what?" Elsa asks. Her face starts to cloud over with what looks like doubt, or hurt, which – no, no, that wasn't the intention.

"Hot!" Anna blurts out, because it's the first word that came to mind and she's an idiot.

Elsa's eyes widen, but the corner of her mouth turns up in a small, shy smile that send Anna's heart fluttering. So, okay, maybe Anna's complete lack of filter isn't _all_ bad.

"Um, sorry. I didn't mean to say that."

Elsa raises one eyebrow.

Anna can't seem to stop making a fool of herself, so she continues, "Okay, I guess I did. It's true! I mean, you have to know that. You're really hot. Gorgeous, even!" Anna _needs _to shut the hell up, but there's a pinkish blush making its way up Elsa's neck, and she's distracted, and she can't seem to stop. Fucking. Talking. "So, like, if I'd met you in college I would've thought you were, like, a super popular sorority-girl type, like the kinds of girls that are always out partying? That's all I meant."

She chuckles uneasily, because Elsa's still staring at her with that piercing icy-blue gaze.

"Although, now that I think about it, you're hot, but not exactly in a sorority girl way, you know? I mean, those girls are pretty, but you're, like, _ethereal_. I mean, totally out of anyone's league. I'd like to see anyone that could ever catch your eye 'cause they'd have to be _perfect_, I mean, just really – um – wow, I am…saying a lot of words, aren't I?" She clears her throat. "I'll stop now."

Elsa gives her a small, unreadable smile, her gaze solid and steady on Anna's face while Anna fidgets uncomfortably, waiting for Elsa to say something (like, "you're creepy", maybe, or "please leave my hotel room").

Instead, Elsa laughs to herself – a tiny, soft sound that makes Anna want to gather her up in her arms and hold her forever – and says, "You're very honest."

Oh, good. She doesn't hate her. Anna's starting to think Elsa must be the most patient person the world, to be putting up with Anna's word vomit and rambling so well. "Yeah, I…need to start thinking before I talk, probably."

"No," Elsa says. "I like it. You wouldn't be you without it."

"Oh," Anna says. She wonders why hearing that from Elsa fills her with a comfortable warmth, why it makes her feel so profoundly like maybe everything she is – rough edges and all – is perfectly okay the way it is. Like maybe Elsa and her kind words, her gravelly voice and her delicate hands, could take those rough edges and smooth them out without sanding them down. "Well, alright then. If you say so."

"I do say so."

It almost makes Anna uncomfortable, the conviction with which Elsa pronounces those words. It should be too familiar a thing for a near-stranger to say to her. And somehow, still, it isn't.

She opens her mouth to speak, but Elsa interrupts her before she can. "I know you're about to ask about going to dance. And my answer is, yes, fine, I'll go out with you. Just…" And then Elsa's face collapses a little on itself, and she looks a lot less like the poised, elegant woman she is and a lot more like a nervous young girl. "Don't, ah, judge me? I'm not the most coordinated person."

Anna snorts. "Elsa, have you met me? This morning I tripped over the _floor_."

Elsa laughs, and Anna thinks she wants to keep making Elsa laugh for as long as she possibly can.

xxx

Anna goes to her room – finally, she's barely _seen _it since they got here – and puts on the one decent dress she'd been able to stuff into her bag, a form-fitting black affair that she _thinks_ hugs her nonexistent curves in all the right ways. Then she does her makeup, more carefully than she usually does: darkens her auburn eyelashes (without mascara, they're _way_ too light, barely even there), puts on a shade of lipstick probably way too dark and provocative for the occasion, smudges on a little bit of eyeshadow. She feels like a high-school girl going to prom, giddy at the thought of her revealing herself to her date, the butterflies in her stomach emerging from their cocoons and taking flight when she thinks of Elsa performing a similar ritual in the next room.

Except she doesn't have a date, or anyone to impress at all, and she's an idiot deluding herself into thinking she and Elsa have _any_ connection beyond a simple friendship of convenience, born of spending a couple days in close proximity.

A sharp rap on her door jolts her out of her thoughts and startles her into dropping her blush palette.

"Are you ready?"

"Almost!" Anna calls, her voice sounding _entirely_ too high and nervous. "You can come in if you want!" Wait, what? No, no, now Elsa's going to see the efforts to which she's going to look halfway decent –

"I can't, I need you to open the door for me," Elsa says, and Anna can hear the smile in her voice.

She finishes her makeup hastily, definitely smearing a spot of her eyeliner but _whatever it's fine she won't notice hopefully_, and wrenches the door open, and – oh, wow.

Elsa stands in the doorway, her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes flicking between Anna's face and the ground, looking like – well, Anna doesn't really have the words for it. An angel sent to earth specifically to take Anna's breath away, maybe? Her hair is down, and out of its braid it's long enough to reach her waist, and she's wearing a loose off-the-shoulder white dress that's definitely too casual to look _this good_, and the sight of her bare collarbone is incredibly distracting.

Anna doesn't realize she's been standing there with her mouth flapping like a fish until Elsa speaks.

"Anna? Are you alright?"

"Hm?" She snaps out of it, thank God, and regains enough of her senses to avoid acting like a teenage boy who's just discovered the wonders of the female form. "Yeah!" Her voice comes out an octave higher than usual. She clears her throat. "I mean, yeah. I'm good. In fact, I'm almost ready. Should be good to leave soon."

Elsa enters her room and follows her back into the bathroom, where she watches over Anna's shoulder as she fixes her hair.

"You look beautiful," Elsa says, and Anna's heart soars.

And then the pang of pain behind her eyes returns again, just briefly, before the world is righted again.

It's not just the compliment. It's…it does something to Anna that goes deeper than just butterflies, she thinks. It instills an immutable, unshakeable rightness, like when you catch a whiff of a smell from your childhood – mom's freshly-baked cookies, maybe, or an old friend's laundry detergent – and for a moment the fabric of your very being shifts to accommodate a memory so deep it's etched into your senses.

"Thanks," Anna says. "You look…I mean, wow. 'Beautiful' doesn't even begin to cover it."

"Oh, that's not true," Elsa giggles.

She tucks a final strand of hair back into place, smooths down a few wrinkles on her dress, and sticks her hands in the air in triumph. "Ready! Finally!"

Elsa lets out what sounds like a deeply resigned sigh. "This is _not_ me protesting going out, but – I just _wonder_, out of pure curiosity, what is the point of going somewhere to dance when you could just do it in _peace_ in the privacy of your own home?"

Anna looks at her, waiting for the punchline, but Elsa just stares right back. Then Anna breaks and laughs, because _what_, and Elsa starts laughing too, and soon they're just giggling giddily at each other in a hotel bathroom with various makeup implements scattered everywhere.

"You know," Anna says, when they're finally done with their breathless fit of punch-drunk laughter, "I wonder if there's anywhere people can go if they want to, like, slow-dance. Is high school prom your last chance for that? Wait, did you go to your prom?"

"No."

"I should've guessed." She smiles at Elsa's indignant huff. "Isn't that kind of sad? What if I just want to go out and waltz or something?"

"You go back to the nineteenth century where you belong, I suppose."

Anna laughs. "I'm being serious!"

"I had to take ballroom dance lessons when I was younger," Elsa says. Her gaze flickers away from Anna's. "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

"Really?"

"Really. It mostly consists of being bored and having to be touched by men you don't know."

She studies Elsa's slender hands and the neat lines of her body, and tries to measure her next question carefully, but her thoughts are clouded by the idea of having those hands touching her. "Will you show me?"

Elsa frowns. "I…guess I could, but there really isn't much to it. It's not very exciting."

"Well, still. Please?"

She sticks out her bottom lip in an unabashedly childish pout, and she swears she can see Elsa's resolve crumbling bit-by-bit; the stern line of her mouth dissolves into a smile, and the frown line between her eyebrows disappears. Still, Elsa says, "There's nothing to show. If I lead, all you'd have to do is follow my feet."

"What if I want to lead?" Anna drops to one knee with an exaggerated flourish, bowing her head and taking Elsa's hand in hers. "Okay, pretend I'm, like, a prince or something fancy and gallant like that. May I have this dance, my lady?"

"Get up, that's not how you ask for a dance," Elsa says, but she offers her hand to Anna anyway, using the other hand to hide her smile. "But yes, fine. You may."

Elsa's familiar cool touch is dizzying. "What next?"

"Hand on my back," Elsa says as she lays her own hand on Anna's shoulder, and suddenly Anna's mouth is dry. "Here." She takes Anna's hand and guides it to her back, just under her shoulder-blade.

Mentally, she orders her trembling fingers to still, and prays her hand isn't sweaty. She lets her hand hover above the fabric of Elsa's dress, just barely touching, because she isn't brave enough to flatten her palm out or touch her there at all, really. (Seriously, she doesn't know how men do it, this whole pursuing business. If she's ever on speaking terms with Johnny again, she's going to buy him a beer for going through this torture with her.)

"Bet you've never done this with a man this short before," Anna jokes, if only to relieve the knot that's currently twisting itself up in her stomach.

"No, I can't say I have." Elsa smirks and wraps Anna's left hand in her right. Elsa's height makes it so that anytime she talks, it's into Anna's ear, so that the puffs of her breath wash over Anna's skin and make her shudder. "Step forward with your left foot. That's the first beat."

Anna does. Elsa mirrors her by stepping back with her right.

"Now forward with your right," Elsa murmurs, and Anna obeys mindlessly, like she's under a spell, a marionette on strings being controlled by nothing more than Elsa's voice. "That's two."

In a way, she is under a spell, really. Elsa has to be, like, a hypnotist or something, because right now she could say 'now open the window and jump' and Anna's sure she would do it without question.

She tilts her head up just slightly, and the motion is matched by Elsa leaning down enough that their gazes are locked. Anna is mesmerized. She's underwater, swimming through a haze of her own making, and her only line to the surface is the sight of Elsa's lips forming words she has no choice but to obey –

Elsa moves her head forward, and the motion would be imperceptible were it not for the fact that it makes it so her cheek presses against the side of Anna's hair just barely. "Left foot in," she whispers. "That's three."

"And then" –she has to pause to swallow –"I just do the same thing, but backwards with my right foot?"

"You've got it," Elsa says. The air from her whisper makes Anna's hair rise and flutter. "And that's your three-count box-step."

"Okay, I'm gonna try it without direction," Anna says. She taps out a one-two-three, one-two-three rhythm lightly against Elsa's back, and leads her in a small, clumsy waltz across the porcelain tile of the (absurdly large) hotel bathroom. "How's that?"

"Perfect," Elsa whispers, but Anna's not entirely convinced she's paying attention, because she's definitely stepped on Elsa's toes on accident at least once and she keeps fumbling over her own feet.

It's not really about the dancing, though, is it? It's about – how this almost feels like they're holding each other, and how Elsa is just swaying against her, and how every time Anna clumsily steps forward she ends up bumping into Elsa so that for a fraction of a second she's flush against Elsa's body.

She lets her eyes flutter shut. This is nice. And not just because Elsa's so close to her looking so good. She keeps circling back to Elsa's arm on her shoulder, her feather-light touch. Tender, gentle, like she's something fragile: Handle With Care.

This is – Elsa is almost _holding her_, is all her mind seems to want to focus on.

It's too much, it's far too much too soon. But what if she opened her eyes, and tilted her face up a little more, and put her hand to Elsa's chin to bring her down to her lips, just to be a little closer, just to taste – ?

"Should we leave soon?" Elsa's voice is quiet and hesitant. "It's getting late."

Anna drops Elsa's hand and steps away, and her whole body seems to scream for the loss of the contact. "Yeah, probably. And thanks for the lesson."

xxx

Dancing turns out to be, well, not actually as fun as Anna thought it was going to be, because the dance floor of the bar they go to is packed full of sweaty bodies, and because they find out _very_ quickly that Elsa attracts head-turns and jaw-drops and wandering eyes wherever she goes. It makes Anna feel kind of proud, actually, having someone so drop-dead-stunning on her arm (well, technically, anyway – Elsa wraps her hand around Anna's bicep when they get inside and clings to it like a lifeline), but the attention rapidly gets old, so they find a couple of stools at the bar and settle in.

The attention also ignites something odd in Anna – a possessiveness she didn't know she had. She'd never been the jealous type with Johnny, but when a guy sends a drink over to Elsa with a wink, Anna finds herself scooting closer to her and glaring at him until he gives up.

She's not jealous in, like, a weird way. She's _not._ She just likes having Elsa all to herself, and – okay, well.

Maybe it is in a weird way.

"Truth or dare?"

Anna sips her drink – a syrupy-sweet, electric-blue, _strong_ Adios Motherfucker, which she'd ordered partly to hear Elsa's scandalized gasp at the name – and waits for Elsa's response.

"I don't like this game." Elsa taps her fingers against her gin and tonic. "People do this for fun?"

"Just pick one," Anna says with an eye-roll. She almost has to yell to be heard over the music playing, some awful club mix of an Ed Sheeran song. "I still can't believe you've never played truth or dare. What did you do at sleepovers when you were little?"

"I wasn't allowed to have sleepovers," Elsa mutters, but there's an undercurrent of something real underlying it, something that sounds like hurt or apology.

"Wait, wait, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that." She offers an encouraging smile. "First time for everything, though, right? So pick one. Truth or dare."

"Subject myself to interrogation or be forced to perform some ridiculous stunt?" Elsa takes a sip of her drink. "Fine. I choose…truth."

Anna's response is immediate. "How old are you?"

"How did I know you were going to ask me that?" Elsa sighs, long and heavy, like she's beleaguered by all the troubles in the world. "If you _must_ know, I'm twenty-six."

"See, that wasn't so hard! I half-expected you to be like, 'older than you think,'" Anna says, in what she thinks is a passable impression of Elsa's grave, solemn voice.

Elsa snorts and slaps the bar, the motion jostling her drink so a little drop spills over the side. Anna wonders if she isn't a little tipsy. She's so rigidly in control of herself, it would be surprising for her to ever relinquish enough of that restraint to even come close to being drunk, but – her face is a little flushed, and her laughter is a little louder and freer than usual, so – maybe?

For her own part, Anna is determined to stay as stone-cold sober as possible tonight. Any lowering of her inhibitions whatsoever could result in her doing something irrefutably rash; even now, it's taking all her willpower not to inch a little closer to Elsa, or to blurt out something far too honest and intense, like _I've only spent a few days with you but you already feel like something I've been looking for my whole life and I want to get to know you better and I can't believe you're a real person that exists in this world because you're way too good to be true._

Yeah, no. It's definitely for the best that Anna remain sober tonight. And for the rest of this trip. And for the rest of her acquaintance with Elsa, however long that ends up being.

(She hopes forever, but she quashes that line of thinking as soon as it takes shape.)

"Your turn," Elsa says. "Truth or dare?"

"Dare."

"Okay…" Elsa scrunches up her nose and her brows, and Anna wonders if this is her usual thinking face or if she's seriously feeling that gin and tonic. Whatever it is, she looks adorable doing it. "I can't think of one!"

"Well, think harder!"

"This isn't fair. You would do anything I dared you to, even if we weren't playing this game."

Anna blushes fiercely – Elsa's _right_, but how does she know her so well already? "Not _anything._"

"I dare you to stop making me play this."

"You're impossible," she laughs. Elsa just smiles and shrugs. "Okay, gimme a minute, I have to pee. Time to break the seal." She slides off her seat and scurries away just as Elsa yells "what's 'breaking the seal?'" after her.

Which, whoa – she must have been drinking more than she thought, because the world spins a little as she stumbles through the crush of people dancing and toward the neon restroom sign. Shit. It's fine, it's fine, she can just drink a ton of water later and be fine. She'll just have to be _really_ careful about what she says and does.

The floor is sticky from the residue of layers and layers of spilled drinks, and she's wearing heels, and she's wobbly on her feet from the alcohol, but somehow she manages to make it there, and in and out of a stall, in one piece. She regards herself in the mirror: hair still decent, makeup in place, eyes maybe a little unfocused but that's okay. She doesn't look _drunk_-drunk. Sure, her face is a little numb and her skin buzzes with the anticipation of rejoining Elsa at the bar, but she's not _drunk_. Right?

The music has shifted to something different when she leaves the bathroom, something with an insistent, bass-heavy beat that thumps through the floor and into her bones as she walks, drives her forward with more confidence than she feels. She picks her way through the crowd once more, back toward Elsa like a ship to its port, even though the strobing lights make it hard to see and her view is further obstructed by lots of shoulders and backs (life's hard when you're barely over five feet tall).

She glimpses a familiar flash of white-blonde hair, but when she clears the crowd and comes within sight of the bar, she sees – Elsa, of course, but there's someone else sitting next to her now, a pretty brown-haired woman who is currently _way_ too close for comfort.

The woman leans in just a bit and whispers something in Elsa's ear, which – Elsa wouldn't like that, she values her personal space too much to be okay with that! But Elsa just smiles and says something in response, and the woman throws her head back and laughs.

The sight stokes the embers of the same fire that was lit earlier that night, the ugly, smoldering blaze in her belly that she can't put a name to. "Jealousy" is too easy; this is different, something baser. It's absurd – Anna is owed nothing here; she knows that – what is she even upset about?

Maybe it's just that Anna had assumed Elsa's initial stiffness around her, the walls, were just a fact of the way she interacted with the world in general – but now, here she is, with a stranger, and sure her smile is still shy and close-mouthed, but…it's different? Maybe it's that Anna had selfishly prided herself on being able to chip away at that cool exterior just a little bit. But – maybe it's not just her. Maybe it could have been anyone.

She's almost to the bar when the other woman slides off the barstool and puts a hand on Elsa's thigh. At that, Elsa stiffens and shifts away, but Anna's already quickened her pace to the bar.

"Hey!" she yells. Elsa looks her way and her face brightens, but her smile and wave is quickly replaced by a confused frown when she sees the stormy look on Anna's face. She inserts herself between Elsa and the stranger, who is…considerably taller than her. Damn. She puffs her chest out and hopes it makes her look intimidating. "What the hell do you think you're doing, huh?!"

"Anna, what – " Elsa starts.

Anna should probably be able to tell by the way it's hard to get her words out without slurring that this is a stupid, stupid game she's playing, but by this point it feels like her actions are out of her control. She takes a step toward the woman, who backs up and gives Elsa a wary, questioning glance.

"Anna, relax." Elsa chuckles nervously and says, "She's had a little too much to drink, I'm sorry."

"No, I haven't!" It's an obvious lie. "I'm fine, I just – you need – you – back off!" she splutters.

Then, in a stunning display of impulsive decision-making that's impressive even for Anna, she lurches forward and pushes the woman backwards with her palms – just a little bit, and she's twice Anna's size anyway so it barely does anything, but it's enough to convince a bouncer who's taken notice of her to politely (read: not politely at all) escort her out of the bar, while Elsa trails behind her and offers sheepish apologies on her behalf.

xxx

Later, Elsa sits on the curb outside with her for a good twenty minutes while Anna holds her head in her hands and groans periodically (whether it's from her headache or embarrassment, she isn't sure). She lays her hand on the back of Anna's neck – right on the spot that hurts, which she somehow knows without having to be told – and her skin is _freezing_, but it feels good. It helps with the ache.

"'m sorry," she mumbles, for probably the twentieth consecutive time. "I really didn't think I was drinking that much. My drink can't have been that strong."

She can hear the tension, the exasperation in Elsa's voice when she says, "Remind me again what your drink was called?"

"…You have a point there."

Elsa is mad at her. Or annoyed, at least, or frustrated. When she speaks, there's an edge to her voice that makes it clear she's going to great efforts to restrain her tone, to be polite. And Anna deserves every bit of it, because honestly, what was she _thinking_?

Nothing, clearly. She never thinks.

After sitting there feeling sorry for herself for a little bit longer, she thinks she's okay enough to walk back to the hotel, so they stumble along (well, Anna stumbles, and Elsa supports her weight) in tense silence. It feels like an eternity: traversing a couple blocks of sidewalk, through the hotel lobby, an elevator ride to the seventh floor, all without Elsa saying anything.

It's not until they reach the threshold of Elsa's room that Elsa turns around and Anna sees the look in her eyes, but it's not annoyance, exactly, it's something – wilder, more frenzied.

"Anna, what the _hell _was that?" Elsa says.

"I – I don't know, I just saw – I don't know," she finishes. "Who was that?"

"I don't know! Just some stranger who wanted to talk to me!" Elsa pinches the bridge of her nose. "What about that necessitated throwing a fit?!"

"Okay, you can't tell me she wasn't getting handsy," Anna says, her voice rising. "I didn't like…how she was looking at you."

"It was _fine_! I had it under control! I can take care of myself," Elsa hisses.

It's disconcerting how worked up Elsa's getting – her hands are clasped in front of her chest and she's wringing them together furiously, and her feet are setting an anxious back-and-forth pace in front of Anna. She's not sure why, but she hates seeing Elsa with her hands like that, like she's curling in on herself, shielding herself from something.

"What – jeez, I'm sorry, it was stupid, but I don't understand why you're this upset," Anna says. She realizes the second it leaves her mouth that it was the wrong thing to say.

"_I _don't understand why _you_ were so upset back there!" Elsa says. "Why do you care who talks to me and how they look at me?!"

Oh. Right. There it is. A question Anna can't answer without embarrassing herself even further – or, really, a question she can't answer at all, unless answers that defy all logic and reason count.

And Elsa's right _there_, just a foot or so in front of her, looking so fragile and vulnerable and still not _angry_, really, just confused and bewildered. And so _beautiful_, with her hair messy from her anxiously running her hands through it, and her chest heaving a little bit because she's breathing hard after that outburst, and her wide-open blue eyes.

And Anna wants to answer her question. She does, she really does. Why _does_ she care so much? Why does it bother her to think of Elsa giving someone else the attention reserved for Anna?

Anna can't resist. She can't help herself. She doesn't know if the heat in her cheeks is from being drunk or from being so close to Elsa but it doesn't matter, because she's burning up and she needs Elsa to…to quench something, to cool her down. To douse her fire.

Elsa's still staring at her, waiting for an answer. It's not helping. So Anna does the only thing she's ever known how to do, and acts without thinking.

She surges forward – it only takes three steps to close the distance to Elsa, but being drunk makes her steps clumsy anyway, so she ends up throwing her arms around Elsa's neck for support. She only has time to catch a brief glimpse of the look in Elsa's eyes – not scared, or alarmed, to Anna's relief – before she leans up, wraps a hand around Elsa's jaw, and presses their lips together.

It's soft and close-mouthed at first, because drunk as Anna is, she wants to give Elsa the chance to pull away if she wants to. But after a heartbeat, she feels Elsa move her lips against her own, slowly, gently, and Anna parts her mouth slightly to take the taste of mint and gin and lipstick from Elsa.

The first thing she registers is that unlike the rest of her, Elsa's mouth is warm.

The second thing she registers is the white-hot electricity that seems to resonate up her spine at the contact, and at the little sound Elsa makes when her tongue brushes against Anna's.

The third thing she registers is, after several seconds that feel like a lifetime, the gentle pressure of Elsa's hands at her shoulders, pushing her back. It's only then that she pulls away, staggering backwards, wiping Elsa's lipstick off her mouth with the back of her hand. There are so many things she wants to say, like _wow_ and _what happens now?_

But then she sees Elsa breathing hard and staring at her with what looks like…fear, or horror, even, and the only words she can get out are, "Oh my god, oh no. I'm so sorry. I don't know why I did that, I'm so stupid. I'm sorry, I'm…I'm sorry."

"Anna, I…" Elsa steps backward hastily, her keycard in one hand, the doorknob in the other. She unlocks her door with shaking hands and fumbles with the doorknob before she finally gets it open. "I can't, I –"

"Wait, Elsa!" Anna cries out, but Elsa slips into her room and shuts the door before Anna can say anything else, and she's left standing outside a locked door, numb, silent, drunk, and alone.

She sleeps in her own bed that night.


	9. bite chunks out of me

Anna's cold.

Freezing, really. She reaches for the comforter, but her hands come up empty, and when she opens her eyes to look for it she finds that it's daytime, and she's outside, and she's cold not because of the air conditioning but because she's surrounded by ice and snow.

It's a blizzard, in _summer_, worse than anything she's ever seen before. Wind whips at her face, and she blinks against the powdery flurries that batter her and coat her eyelashes with white. Her fingers are blue, and not from frostbite; the snow and wind buffet her skin, but what sets her teeth chattering is a burning kind of cold that claws at her chest, that threatens to swallow her from the inside out.

She's going somewhere. She knows that much – there's somewhere she needs to be, and it's important, more important than anything she's ever done. A man? She thinks she can register distantly that there's a man she needs to get to. Once she finds him, it'll be alright, and she can figure out where the hell she is and what she's doing there.

Abruptly, the torrent of snow stops, and fat flakes of it float in the air in front of her. The harsh light coming from the sky hurts her eyes – not sunlight, just bright white all around her – but she resists the temptation to close them and just give up.

She can't give up. She feels that conviction in her bones, in her sinews.

She sees a man in the distance, hears him calling her name – _that's it, go_ – but something compels her to turn, and there's a flash of blue a few feet away from her, someone laying on the ice, someone crying – oh, _fuck_, her heart hurts, burns when she breathes like it used to when she was a kid, and her skin's numb and she's moving her legs but she can't really feel them and then with blinding clarity she knows she's going to die but it doesn't matter all that matters is moving as fast as she can and oh god oh god oh god Elsa –

xxx

Anna jerks awake to the familiar hum of the air conditioner and the dark of her hotel room. She feels unsettled in a way she can't put words to, a lurching in her chest like she's just missed a step walking down the stairs.

She does not remember the dream that woke her.

xxx

The next morning brings heavy golden sunlight streaming in through Anna's hotel room window, and with it comes the harsh, unyielding light of clarity: Anna has fucked up. Badly. It takes her a minute of blinking the sleep out of her eyes and wondering where Elsa is before the events of last night come back to her, and then hot, suffocating shame rises in her chest – or maybe that's just bile, from the wave of nausea that hits her when she sits up in bed.

Maybe it's time to take a nice extended break from alcohol.

Anna stays cocooned in the sheets for way longer than necessary; she definitely isn't falling back asleep now that she's up and thinking, but the longer she spends wrapped in a burrito of fluffy hotel comforter, the longer she can avoid getting up and facing…well, everything. Elsa. Herself. Life. Her hangover. She rolls over and groans out loud once, into her pillow, just to really put the cherry on top of her little self-pity party.

"Fuck!" she says, before deciding that talking to herself just makes her feel even more pathetic.

But it's already ten o'clock, and she's getting hungry, and life has to go on, right? Even if her limbs feel like lead when she tries to move, even if the thought of having to be in a car with Elsa for the four hours left of their journey makes her want to crawl into the ground: life has to go on, which for Anna means she has no choice but to nut up, knock on Elsa's door, and make this right.

Anna can make this right. She knows she can.

She brushes the taste of alcohol out of her teeth, showers and scrubs the sweat and stickiness of the bar off her skin, and makes herself a strong cup of coffee in the hotel room's Keurig. (It tastes like motor oil plus half-and-half, but she definitely won't be able to get through the morning without the caffeine.) Then she takes a breath to steel herself, walks the ten footsteps it takes to reach Elsa's door (not that she's counted), and knocks.

Quietly, at first. A light _tap tap tap-tap tap_, met with silence, save for a slight rustling sound that makes it obvious that Elsa _is _in there.

Well, okay. She figured it wouldn't be that easy.

She knocks again, a little louder and firmer this time.

"Hey, Elsa," she says, taking care not to sound pushy or too insistent. "I understand if you don't want to talk to me right now. I just, um, wanted to come apologize. For last night." Mentally, she chides herself; of _course_ for last night, dummy, what else would she be apologizing for? "Well, I guess that part's obvious. Just…I'm really sorry."

Nothing. The solid silence of the closed door shouldn't hurt as much as it does; Anna's the one who messed things up, and Elsa has every right to feel weird about it. But hearing her knocks go unanswered puts a sinking, dreadful feeling in the pit of Anna's stomach.

"Look, I get it," she continues, "if you need space or something. But just so you know, you don't have to worry about me doing something like that again. I know it's not an excuse, but I was just…drunk and not thinking straight, I promise." She pauses, weighing her words carefully, but decides honesty is better than crafting the perfect, detached apology. "But, um, I missed you this morning. Like, a lot. I don't know why. That's probably dumb. But when I woke up I half-expected you to be there with breakfast for me again."

The elevator _dings_, and a family with two little boys steps out. The parents eye her warily as she continues talking to a door, so she gives them a halfhearted wave and what she hopes is a friendly chuckle.

"Um, okay, people are looking at me funny, so I'm gonna go back to my room. I'll be there if you change your mind." She sighs. "And I understand if you, like, don't want to give me a ride the rest of the way back or something. I can figure something out."

She's about to step away and back to her own room when she hers the _click _of the lock, and sees the door swing open slowly. Elsa peers out at her, looking like she's slept just about as well as Anna did last night, which is to say…poorly. There are dark crescents of shadow under her eyes, and her hair is tied in a messy ponytail.

"I'm not going to make you find your own way home from here," Elsa says, after a moment of regarding Anna with such heaviness in her eyes it makes Anna want to slink away in shame. "That would be ridiculous. I wouldn't do that."

"Oh," Anna says. "Okay. Are – are you sure?"

Elsa smiles, but it's not quite a…happy smile. Anna doesn't know what to make of it. "Of course I'm sure."

"Well, okay then. I won't complain too much." She's still standing at the threshold of the door. Walking in feels like it would be too presumptuous. "Elsa, I…I don't know if you heard, um, all that, but I am _so _sorry, you have no idea. I don't know what I was thinking. Well, I guess I wasn't thinking at all, clearly."

"It's okay," Elsa says. "You didn't – you didn't really do anything wrong. Please don't feel bad. I'm sorry for reacting so oddly."

"You didn't!" Anna says, maybe a bit too hastily, because she can't stand the guilty look on Elsa's face, the way her arm wraps around her middle like she's shielding herself from something. "I kinda just…sprang that on you out of nowhere." She cringes at the memory. "It won't happen again, I promise."

"I'm just not in a place for anything like that," Elsa mutters to the ground. "Not – it's not anything to do with you."

"I get it, I get it." Anna laughs. "I mean, I'm hot off a broken engagement. I'm not in the right headspace for anything new either, believe me. I just make bad decisions."

Elsa looks up at Anna, losing the staring contest she's been having with her feet. "Not bad decisions, necessarily. You just…"

"Act without thinking?"

"Let's call it 'following your heart'."

"That's a polite way to put it."

Anna gives Elsa a tentative smile, and Elsa smiles back, and then suddenly she's just been looking into those _eyes_ for way too many seconds, which is how all this trouble started. It's not fair; she's going to have to spend the whole rest of her friendship with Elsa avoiding eye contact, and also avoiding looking at her hair, or her lips, or her neck, or her – oh, Jesus Christ, she _definitely_ can't be looking at anything _below_ Elsa's neck.

Anna fixes her gaze resolutely on Elsa's nose. It's as perfect as the rest of her, but it's still a nose, so it'll have to do.

"Anna," Elsa says. "I think right now I need…a few moments alone. Just for a little while, if you don't mind."

"Oh! Yeah, totally!" Anna says, trying to act like she wasn't just daydreaming about kissing Elsa's nose. "Of course I don't mind. I'll just, um, be in my room."

"Okay," Elsa says. "I'll come and get you in a bit."

And the door swings shut once more.

xxx

Anna returns to her room and only spends about fifteen minutes listening to the rumbling of her empty stomach and flipping through the hotel's menu before there's a knock at her door and a call of "room service!"

_Room service?_ She didn't call room service.

When she opens the door, she's greeted by an employee bearing a cart loaded with brunch food. Whoever is responsible for this (well, she's got a hunch as to who that might be) somehow knew exactly which items on her menu were her favorites. She doesn't remember having told Elsa that she prefers chocolate chips in her pancakes and cheddar in her omelets, but she must have mentioned that and more, because everything's been made the way she likes it.

She smiles as she eats. Maybe she didn't mess things up _that_ badly.

xxx

Anna finishes her food – all of it, which is an impressive feat even for her – and Elsa still hasn't come knocking on her door, so she decides to fill her time by doing something she probably should've done a _while_ ago. She reclines against her headboard and pulls the hotel phone into her lap, punching in one of the few numbers she has memorized.

Her mom picks up after two rings. "Hello?"

"Hi, mom," Anna says, trying to force the exhaustion that suddenly threatens to bring her to tears out of her voice.

"Anna banana!" she chirps. "We miss you! How are things going over there?"

She laughs, and then it catches in her throat, because after everything that's happened this past week, the sound of her mother's voice crackling through the phone speaker provides a warmth she didn't realize she's missed.

"Not great," she says, and then she tells her mom everything. About the weeks leading up to the wedding, the niggling sense of not-rightness she'd had, her split-second flight from the altar.

("Well, I never really liked that boy anyway," her mom says, and shame slices through her like a knife, reminding her of all the ways she'd slowly left everything else behind – her family, her friends; her own _wedding_ had maybe fifteen people she knew invited – for him.)

And of course, Anna talks about Elsa. So much about Elsa, actually. Probably more than entirely necessary, but it's her mom; Anna's always told her everything.

"I'm coming home," she says, after she's done delivering the litany of everything that has gone wrong in her life over the last few months.

"Soon?" her mom asks.

"Soon-ish. I don't really know when, yet. Probably pretty soon, now that I've gone and messed things up with Elsa," she says with a wry chuckle. "I just – it's so dumb, because I _just_ met her, but –"

"Not dumb."

"You didn't even hear what I was gonna say!"

"I don't need to hear it to be able to tell you it isn't dumb. Continue."

"Thanks, but you'll change your mind, I promise," Anna says, but she's smiling now. She turns over to lay on her stomach, with her feet in the air, like a teenager calling a friend to gossip about her latest crush. "Anyway. I…I care so _much_ about her already, Mom, which is crazy, and I don't know if it's some sort of rebound coping mechanism or something, but when I'm around her I feel like a completely different person. I don't know what it is about her." 

"Well, you did say she was very beautiful," her mom says, in a slow, patient voice that makes Anna roll her eyes.

"It's not because of _that_, Mom! Or…it's not _just_ because of that."

"Yeah, okay, Anna." Her mom doesn't sound convinced. Anna wants to scream.

"Mom! Seriously!" She huffs out a breath that she hopes sounds annoyed over the phone. "Okay, I'm done talking about this."

"Sorry, sorry!" her mom laughs. "I miss ribbing you, kiddo. You're easy to get a rise out of."

"Hmph."

There's a knock at the door, and Anna shoots up and out of bed so fast she knocks over the lamp on the bedside table, then knocks over the phone receiver, then has to pinwheel one arm out to keep from falling over herself. She ends the phone call with a quick "okay gotta go bye Mom love you see you soon!" and vaults herself over the bed to reach the door.

Elsa's standing there, tapping one foot, her hands clasped in front of her. "Hi," she says.

"Hi," Anna replies, hoping her face isn't too red, hoping her expression doesn't reveal that seeing Elsa there has, in an instant, melted the anxiety threatening to freeze her nerves.

"May I come in?"

"Of course!"

Elsa walks over the threshold and just far enough into the room that Anna can close the door, but doesn't take a seat, just stands there fidgeting by the bathroom. Her hair is back in that braid, the impossibly thick one that just barely tickles the crease of her elbow, and _God _Anna has to stop noticing these details if she wants to maintain any semblance of sanity.

(She can't help but feel like it's not _just _her. The air crackles with charge she doesn't dare to name, electric field lines that tether her to Elsa.)

"You can sit, if you want," she says.

"Right," Elsa mumbles, like she very much does _not_ want that, but she perches herself on an ottoman that's as far away from Anna as possible. "Did I interrupt anything? You sounded like you were speaking with someone."

Oh, shit. She'd been talking pretty quietly, right? Right?

"My mom," she explains. "But we were pretty much done by the time you knocked."

Elsa nods before returning her attention to her hands, folded in her lap. Anna's about to ask her if there was a reason she came – not that she minds the opportunity to just sit in silence and look at her, but, well, she figures that's not why Elsa's here – when Elsa says, "I don't want you to think I'm angry at you or anything." She stops, and her hands fly back up to her chest in that hunched, defensive posture that Anna has come to hate. "But you shouldn't – you shouldn't have kissed me." She purses her lips like she's considering something, then says, "For your sake more than mine."

"What does that mean?"

"You don't want this," Elsa says, the words rushed and hasty, sounding a little too practiced. "Any of it, of – of me."

"Why not?" Anna asks with a quizzical tilt of her head.

"Trust me." Elsa's words are calm and rehearsed, but the way her voice wavers, quiet and pleading, voice makes Anna's breath catch in her chest. "Please."

The moment suddenly has way more gravity than Anna had planned for when she opened the door for Elsa; she'd figured Elsa would come in, she would apologize again, Elsa would give her that sweet little one-sided smile and forgive her, and they could continue on like nothing had happened. But now Elsa's looking at her with a question in her eyes that Anna doesn't know how to answer, and everything seems to have so much more weight than it should.

"I just want to understand," Anna says, and now there's a plea in her words too. "Is something wrong?"

"No, just – I don't know. I can't explain."

"I'm fine with backing off, Elsa, it's just that the way you're talking is kind of worrying me," she says. "I mean, I care about you. If you need someone to tell you you're not, like, unworthy of attention or something, I will, I'll do it."

Elsa makes a frustrated noise, a sort of whine that comes out sounding ridiculously endearing. "I wish I could give you a more satisfactory answer, Anna, but I _really _can't."

(A vision materializes in the back of Anna's mind, quick and blinding as a camera flash – _What are you so afraid of? – I'm just trying to protect you! – _but it disappears before she has the chance to interrogate it, and she's left with nothing more concrete than a lingering, familiar yearning, something too potent to be déjà vu.)

It was just a kiss.

Wasn't it?

It's hard, though, to think of it that way when she can still remember the warmth of Elsa's body pressed against hers. It's not even about anything as simple as lust, although recalling the sensation of Elsa's tongue sliding past her lips makes her shiver; it's about how solid and steady Elsa felt between Anna's arms, how safe she felt, how right.

She knows she wants Elsa more badly than anything she's wanted in her life, just as surely as she knows she can't have her.

"Okay," she says, past everything in her body that's telling her it is not okay.

Elsa looks briefly surprised. "You're okay with that?"

"Yeah," Anna says. "I mean, it was just one drunk kiss. Not a huge deal."

"Right," Elsa says, and Anna hopes she can't see past her lie.

They look at each other, neither willing to break the temporary truce, the tentative peace of the silence that hangs between them, but what Anna's said so far isn't nearly enough.

"Look," she sighs, "the thing is, I feel like meeting you was, like, just the most amazing stroke of luck or fate or whatever, because I haven't even known you for a week and I can already tell you're one of the most interesting people I've ever met."

Elsa draws her bottom lip into her mouth and worries it between her teeth, blinking up at Anna in the most beguiling way possible. She moves to join Elsa on the ottoman; she doesn't miss the way Elsa stiffens away from her.

"And I'm sorry if this sounds weird," Anna continues, "or too intense, but I wanna keep you in my life. If you want that too. So... I'm sorry I made things weird between us last night. Seriously. And I can promise you I definitely won't try anything like that again."

Elsa exhales, her shoulders slumping like all the air's gone out of her. "Okay. I... okay."

There's so much they aren't saying to each other – Anna can tell, by the care with which Elsa considers her words, all her cryptic warnings and refusals, that there must be _something_ else – and she wonders if all this hiding will be an ongoing trend in their friendship.

The ottoman is smaller than it looked. Anna didn't realize, when she sat down, just how close the position would put her to Elsa's face. She wanted to be closer, yes, but not _this _close, not so close that she can count Elsa's eyelashes, dark and long, fluttering against her cheek when she blinks. To her surprise, Elsa holds her gaze, doesn't bite her lip and glance away like Anna's grown so used to her doing. Anna clears her throat nervously and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"Anna," Elsa says, and Anna expects her words to be some other form of rejection, but instead she says, slowly and quietly, "do you have any idea how beautiful you are?"

Under any other circumstances, hearing this would've probably sent Anna tumbling off her seat, blushing and overwhelmed, but Elsa's eyes on her have her in what feels like a hypnotist's trance. "No," she says. "But you could tell me."

"You…" Elsa starts, but then the moment breaks, and she seems to come back to herself with a start and several blinks of those blue eyes. "You're, ah, you're very pretty. You should know that."

_Oh_, Anna thinks, as Elsa offers her a weak smile and stands, _this is going to be really hard._

xxx

"How much longer do you think we'll stay here?" Anna asks at dinner, twirling spaghetti around her fork like everything's normal, like they're still just a couple of strangers on a road trip.

"How much longer do you want to?" Elsa says. "Like I said, I'm not really beholden to a schedule. It's up to you."

"Few more days, maybe? Make it an even week?"

Elsa chews silently for a moment. Anna can tell by the way she's avoiding her gaze that she's thinking the same thing Anna is, wondering if she can take a few more _days_ of this proximity without crossing this invisible line again. How much longer can they stretch this rubber band before it snaps?

"If that's what you want," Elsa says. Anna finds herself disappointed at how noncommittal the answer is.

(To tell the truth, she misses her family, and her home, and school starts in a month and she needs to get her shit together. But Elsa is rapidly becoming an addiction, whatever way Anna can have her, and who is she to deny herself the pleasure of Elsa's company for a little longer?)

"It is," Anna says, and Elsa smiles, a genuine smile this time, not the sad empty thing Anna had seen on her face before.

"You have a bit of –" Elsa mutters, then clicks her tongue and leans forward to brush her finger against the corner of Anna's lips. She finds herself leaning into the touch. "There. You had some sauce on your face."

"Oh," Anna says, reddening. "Whoops. Messy eater."

She doesn't know if she likes this, the way everything they say and do now feels like it has an extra layer of meaning lurking underneath the surface, the way she has to watch herself to make sure she doesn't look at Elsa with too much unmasked want in her eyes. The ease of their dynamic has given way to a delicate performance, dancing around each other, getting too close and then backing away.

But maybe it's been like that the whole time, and Anna didn't notice until she was invested enough that every withdrawal started to sting.

Anna talks just to fill the silence. "You're gonna love my parents," she says. "They're the sweetest people you'll ever meet. They'll probably make you stay for dinner when you drop me off."

Elsa furrows her brows. "You want me to meet them?"

"Well, yeah, of course. You're my friend! And, anyway, they're going to want to meet the person who hauled me across the country to get me home safe."

"Oh. Okay." Elsa lapses into a thoughtful silence, then says, "And they're good to you? I mean, you…have a good relationship with them?"

Anna wonders if this is Elsa's sweet, awkward way of expressing concern, of letting her know she cares about her. "Oh, yeah, totally. They're wonderful. I mean, they're not perfect, but that's all parents, I guess." Elsa frowns, so Anna adds, hastily, "But they do their best!"

"Hm. That's good," Elsa says, and the solemn way she nods reminds Anna of what she'd said a few days ago about her own parents, about how they had died when she was young. Her mind conjures up an image, unbidden, of a much younger Elsa trying to navigate the world completely alone, and it makes Anna want to leap across the table and gather her up in her arms, protect her from hurt and loneliness and whatever other misfortunes she's encountered.

She wonders if Elsa was as serious and shy in her childhood as she is as an adult. She thinks she can see it, traces of who Elsa might have been in her past, the more Anna manages to coax her past the ramparts of ice she seems to have built around herself; she sees it in Elsa's eyes when she rolls them at something Anna has said just to make her laugh, and in Elsa's smile when Anna repeatedly sucks up her noodles a little overzealously, marinara sauce splattering on her cheeks.

It seems all she needs to do is watch Elsa, be around her, bask in her light, and she'll keep falling deeper into this hole she's dug for herself. It's a dangerous game to be playing, and yet, she can't seem to find it in herself to stop.

xxx

After dinner, they go back to the Falls themselves, to see the light show. That had always been Anna's favorite thing about her family trips as a child. Her brother would hoist her up onto his shoulders so she could see (she never got too heavy for him, and she never got tall enough to be able to see much from the back of the crowd without standing on her toes, anyway), and her dad would insist on taking pictures of the whole thing on some ridiculously nice camera that he'd splurged on, once, and her mom would turn around and take pictures of her and her brother without paying much attention to the show itself.

Elsa leans against the railing, a small, unassuming smile on her lips, her face tilted up toward the sky. Her eyes are closed; she's not even _looking_ at the lights, but Anna doesn't mind, because the lines of tension have melted from her brows, and for once she actually looks as young as she is. Somehow, being here with Elsa provides the same feeling she remembers having had with her family by her side: like she's safe here, like she's home.

She can't help herself; she inches closer, threads her arm through the crook of Elsa's elbow, and waits.

Elsa opens her eyes and looks at her with a question in them. Before she can pull away, Anna says, "Please?" and Elsa tucks her arm into her side and lets Anna lean her head against her shoulder.

"Isn't this beautiful?" Anna says after a while, shattering the silence that was threatening to grow too heavy for her liking.

"Mmm," Elsa says. "To be honest, I'm not sure I'm giving it the requisite attention."

"Distracted?" Anna's voice lilts in a dangerous approximation of flirting, but she doesn't really care.

Elsa chuckles, low in her throat. "Just a bit."

She can't stop thinking about the brief span of time – just a few seconds, really, maybe even just one – during which Elsa had kissed her _back_. That hadn't just been her imagination. Elsa had parted her lips for her, and Anna had felt the vibration of the pleased little hum that had sent heat flooding her body down to her toes. That had been _real_.

She shifts and angles her body so that more of her body is pressed into Elsa's side. It's funny how the parts of Elsa's skin that are exposed feel cold, her hands and her bare shoulder under Anna's cheek, but the rest of her body is warm against her. Maybe she's just imagining it.

The light show is suddenly much less interesting. She closes her eyes, tilts her head further downward; with the way she's standing now, the action causes her nose to brush against Elsa's neck. She inhales, deeply, just to breathe in the smell of Elsa's perfume.

"Anna," Elsa says, a warning written into her tone.

"I know," Anna replies. She knows Elsa can feel hot breath wash over her shoulder when she talks, right at the hollow in her collarbone where her neck meets her shoulder.

She pulls away, and almost immediately, Elsa mumbles, "No, it's okay. You can keep your head there."

Anna obeys, as if it was a command.

"Your shoulder makes a good pillow," she says.

"Does it? It's on the bonier side, as far as shoulders go."

Anna giggles. There's that side of Elsa she's come to like the most. "Well, it'll do for now."

"Just for now?"

Elsa's words, said with just the right amount of teasing playfulness, come as a surprise to Anna; it skirts the invisible boundary that Elsa's drawn between them. "Mmm, I don't know. I'm not sure how long I wanna keep you around."

"Do let me know when you decide," Elsa says, her smile clear in her voice.

"Make an argument for yourself." Anna bites her lip, tries to tamp down the way her stomach flips. It's been so long since she flirted with intention like this. "Why should I keep you?"

"You've tolerated me for this long. I would like to think I'm good enough company."

"I mean, it's not like I've had a choice."

Elsa makes a mildly affronted noise that makes Anna want to pull her down and kiss the sarcastic smirk off that ruby-red mouth. She stops the thought in its tracks, painstakingly plugs her desire shut like a cork in an opened wine bottle.

"Do you miss home?" Elsa asks.

"Yeah," Anna says. "I mean, I always do, a little."

She feels Elsa nod, the up-and-down motion of her jaw tickling the top of Anna's head.

The lights on the water ahead glow a brilliant red-purple-blue, catching the mist that sprays out from the force of the falls and turning it into a cloud of illuminated cotton candy, and it all looks a little otherworldly, making her head spin, making her feel bold enough to say, "I haven't missed it as much the past few days, though." As if it wasn't obvious enough, she adds, "Since I've been with you, I mean."

She can tell from the sharp intake of breath that that wasn't what Elsa expected her to say. "Why is that?" Elsa says.

"I don't know," Anna says, honestly. "I don't know why. I just know what I feel."

"That's a good skill to have. Knowing what you feel."

Anna laughs. "Sometimes I think maybe I feel too much."

Elsa takes her eyes off the lights, at that; Anna can feel it in the way the tendons of her neck shift that she's moved her head to be able to look down at Anna. She lifts her head off Elsa's shoulder so she can meet her gaze. It's a searching, studying look. Elsa's skin is so pale that it practically reflects the colors of the light show, turning green, then blue, then red, the world's most beautiful chameleon. This close up, she can see that Elsa has a few freckles, stars scattered across a porcelain sky, and she wants to bring her hand up and trace lines between them just to prove to herself that Elsa is real.

Instead, she asks, "What about you? Do you miss home, I mean? Wherever that is for you."

Elsa starts to tip her head forward, and for one wild and terrifying moment Anna thinks she might actually kiss her. But what she actually does is angle down a bit, so that her forehead rests lightly against Anna's without touching any other part of her face.

"More than anything," Elsa says quietly.

Anna doesn't quite know what to make of this. It feels like a confession, something she wasn't really meant to hear, even though the words themselves are pretty innocuous taken at face value. She just looks into Elsa's eyes, which are normally just big and blue but up close have a tired, haunted cast to them.

When Elsa eventually pulls away, Anna finds that she isn't even that disappointed that she didn't kiss her, because she has this sense that what they just shared was somehow more intimate.

"I have a question," Anna says. Now that Elsa isn't so close, she has to talk louder to be heard over the gaggles of chattering tourists, which she doesn't _love_, but whatever.

"Yes?"

"When I kissed you," she starts, and she immediately feels Elsa stiffen against her, so she says, "No, listen – when I kissed you. Maybe I was really drunk, or out of it –"

"You were."

"Well, okay. Yeah. But…um, I remember it pretty clearly. And…and I remember it felt like – I hope this isn't, like, crossing a line or anything, I just have to get this out there – it really kind of felt like you maybe kissed me…back?"

Elsa's eyes are back on the lights. "That isn't a question."

"Oh. Um, yeah. The question is," Anna says, slowly, glancing up between every word to check Elsa's reaction, "did you?"

Elsa is silent for a long, long while before she says anything. "Anna –"

"Just, just, it doesn't have to mean anything, or be a big conversation, I just want to know. If you did. Or if I'm just crazy."

Elsa opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "Yes."

She's not quite sure she heard it right. "Yes?"

"Yes," Elsa says, louder this time. "I did."

"Okay." Anna releases a tight breath she didn't know she was holding. "So…you want this too? At least a little bit?"

"I –"

"You want this too," she says, and it's not a question this time. "It doesn't matter, I just – I just needed to know if it was just me. Last night, in my room, I couldn't stop thinking about you, and I seriously felt like I was losing it a little." She laughs, runs a hand through her bangs to hide how nervous being this honest is making her. "Like, how many days have I known you for, and you're – I'm already – well, it's kind of intense, is what I guess I'm trying to say. But…you feel it too, right? It's not just me?"

That's basically all Anna's cards right there, laid face-up on the table for Elsa to do with them what she will. She's met with silence, though, save for the chatter of other tourists and the rushing of the falls.

"Um, I don't mean to be corny," she tries, "but I just, I feel like I've kind of been waiting to meet you my whole life. As weird as that sounds." Maybe radical, embarrassing honesty will prompt a response.

"I bet you say that to all the girls," Elsa says dryly.

"Yeah, the best pick-up lines all involve weird crap about fate."

Elsa exhales sharply, almost a laugh but not quite. "You're not thinking straight," she says. "You've been through a lot recently. It's natural for your mind to look for a distraction."

"You're not a _distraction_ –"

"I already explained to you why this can't happen," Elsa says.

"No, you didn't!" The couple standing next to Anna stops kissing to throw her a querying glance, and she lowers her voice. "All you did was give me some, like, vague warnings that didn't really tell me anything. I _care_ about you, Elsa, and I just want to understand what's going on."

Elsa pinches the bridge of her nose, screws her eyes shut. "If you care about me, Anna," she says, "you will _listen to me_."

Maybe it's the way Elsa hisses the words at her, or the fact that suddenly Anna has the sense that what she wants from Elsa goes way deeper than just a kiss, but her conviction and her desire wanes until all she's left with is an overwhelming need to protect the girl standing in front of her, begging for something she doesn't understand at all.

So she listens.

"Okay," she says, even though she doesn't really know what she's agreeing to.

xxx

The walk back to the hotel is quiet, but Elsa offers Anna her arm again, and Anna wraps both hands around Elsa's elbow and holds on tighter than she really needs to.

xxx

Elsa doesn't _say_ that Anna can't stay in her room tonight, but the way she angles her body away as she swipes her keycard certainly isn't an invitation. So Anna wishes her goodnight, and Elsa tells her to sleep well, and she pads off to her own room wishing it didn't feel so much like a rejection.

She's brushed her teeth, changed into pajamas, and began her routine of reclining on her bed to the soothing sounds of ESPN (baseball season – she was born and raised in Cleveland, okay?) when a knock sounds at her door. At this point it's a familiar sound: the sharp, neat rap of Elsa's knuckles, the way she only knocks twice, tap-_tap , _the lub-_dub_ of Anna's heartbeat. She turns off the TV, because Elsa doesn't need to know about her ongoing love/hate affair with the Indians, and wipes her suddenly-sweaty palms on her sweatpants before opening the door.

"Fancy seeing you here," she says, just to have something to do with her mouth that won't jeopardize the fragile balance they've struck.

Anna knows something's wrong – or maybe not wrong, exactly, just different – when Elsa comes in without being prompted and kicks the door shut. That formless suspicion solidifies when she notices Elsa's eyes, red-rimmed and shining, reflecting the light from the standing lamp in the corner.

"Whoa, what's wrong – are you okay?" Anna says, even though it's redundant because _duh, no_, and then Elsa takes one, two, three rapid steps towards her until she's too close to be here just to talk and then all of a sudden her mouth is on Anna's and her hands are winding through Anna's hair and – it's all too much, and it wipes any hope of rational thought from Anna's brain, until she forgets the conversation they had just a few hours ago. It _would_ feel too good to be true, the fact that Elsa's kissing her, except the roughness with which Elsa grips her waist and crushes her hard against her own body tips over the edge of simple desire and crosses right into something more desperate, something wilder.

"Elsa," Anna starts. She means for it to be a demurral – not because she doesn't want this but because this feels less like _Elsa_ and more like someone else entirely – but it comes out all breathy and high against Elsa's warm, soft lips and that makes it all too difficult to pull away, even though somewhere deep in her mind she still knows she probably should.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just need…" Elsa trails off, and then kisses her again.

"You said you couldn't," Anna says, less as a protest and more as a reminder.

Elsa closes her eyes, rests her forehead against Anna's the way she did earlier, at the lights. "I know," she says, "but maybe just – maybe we can –"

Anna reaches up to run her knuckle over Elsa's cheek, just to feel, and almost loses it when Elsa lets out a rushed sigh through her nose and leans into the touch. "Look, I don't want you to do anything you're gonna end up regretting."

"I think I would rather do this and regret it than not." She can feel Elsa's eyebrows knit together against her forehead. "Just once," she whispers, "I just needed to – just this once, just tonight."

It sounds more like Elsa's talking to herself, trying to convince herself of something, than to Anna, but she still says, "Okay."

"We won't talk about it tomorrow," Elsa says.

Anna nods, mute, like she's under some sort of spell.

"And in a few days I'll take you home and then we'll just – we'll go back to our lives."

"Okay."

"Kiss me," Elsa whispers, "please."

Anna does. Softer this time, chaste. Just once.

Elsa whimpers when she withdraws. "Again."

She obeys, because she doesn't have a choice. This time Elsa's lips part, open at the first swipe of Anna's tongue so she can taste the heat of Elsa's mouth. It's a slow, torturous kiss, not fed by the same fevered hunger as the one last night; Anna's savoring this one. Like Elsa said – just this once, just tonight. She brings both hands up to wrap around Elsa's jaw, pulls her in deeper before pulling away, tilting her head back just far enough to look into Elsa's eyes.

They still shine with unshed tears, glimmering in the bright hotel room lights. Anna's about to step away to ask if she's okay, but Elsa breathes, "Again," and who is Anna to refuse her?

The third kiss is more heated than the other ones. Anna feels the gentle scrape of teeth as Elsa sucks lightly, briefly, on her bottom lip, and it makes her bold enough to moan into Elsa's mouth.

"God," she whispers. Elsa smiles shyly against her lips. "Again?" she asks, and Elsa nods.

She pulls Elsa in for another kiss, a little harder than before, because every time she pulls away she sees Elsa just looking so vulnerable, so open, so obvious in her desire and so beautiful with those eyes and those dark blonde eyebrows peaked like that, and it lights up a part of Anna that she didn't even know existed.

Elsa makes a noise that sounds a lot like _Anna_, and it drives her _crazy_, hearing her name said like that, dripping with need. She fists a handful of Elsa's braid and tugs so that Elsa's head is forced back, exposing swathes of her bare skin of her neck. Anna kisses down the column of her throat and sucks a bruise into the skin above her collarbone - "_oh,_" Elsa gasps, and her voice is so soft and ragged and high in Anna's ear that she wonders how she'll ever go back to men after this, how anything else could be nearly as satisfying as the breathy little sighs she keeps drawing from Elsa with every swipe of her tongue on her skin.

She guides Elsa to the edge of the bed, pushes back until her knees give way, crawls onto her lap and wonders if Elsa will protest the increased contact. When her hands go to the hem of her pajama shirt and tug – too much clothing, too much of a barrier between them – Elsa stills, and grasps her wrist. "No, no," she says. "It's – that's too much." Anna doesn't miss the lack of _for now_ at the end of that sentence.

They stay like that for what feels like a long time – it's probably the longest Anna's just _kissed_, solely for the sake of kissing without it leading anywhere else, since high school. The heat that swims at the base of her stomach settles, eventually, distilling into a simpler warmth that really just asks for Elsa's arms around her, nothing more.

When she finally pulls away, it's to look into Elsa's eyes, to see if maybe now she can decipher whatever's in the depths of them. All she really sees is muted fear – of what, she doesn't know.

"Stay with me tonight?" she asks. When Elsa's expression turns panicked, she blushes and says, "Not like _that_. I mean, like, to sleep with me."

Elsa raises her eyebrows.

"Oh, God, no. No. Still not the right words," she stammers, but Elsa just smiles and shakes her head. "Um, I meant – I just wanna hold you, really."

"I…" Elsa starts, and Anna can already see the rejection forming on her lips, the _we shouldn't do this _or some other variant thereof. Only a few days of knowing her, and she can already see it coming from miles away – Elsa may define herself with rigidly drawn walls and boundaries, but she's so damn predictable with all the ways she's been pushing Anna away.

"I don't know," Elsa finishes, "if that's a good idea."

And why is it that it gets so _deeply _under her skin, the bizarre, cryptic things Elsa says? She's always had, well, _issues_ with rejection, not feeling good enough, blah blah blah, all the cliché crap any woman in her twenties has to live with, but somehow her mind takes the things Elsa does and turns them into something a whole lot more personal than they logically probably are, until she's spinning, off-kilter, fevered with the need to keep chasing after Elsa.

"Just for tonight," she whispers, taking Elsa's words from earlier for her own purposes, "please."

It just might be the most important thing in the world that Anna has Elsa to herself for tonight, that she can wrap herself around her just to prove to herself that Elsa's really here. It must show in her face, too, because Elsa softens palpably in Anna's grip, rests her head against Anna's chest, right above where her heartbeat thumps embarrassingly loud.

"Just for tonight," Elsa repeats.

Later, Anna finds herself lying awake for hours, tracing the lines on Elsa's palm like the answers to all her questions might be written there. Her sleep, when it finally comes, is deep and dreamless.


	10. interlude, pt i

**1840; Arendelle**

The days after the Thaw are golden, syrupy and honey-heavy in their sweetness, so bright and sunny and warm that every day Elsa wakes up in a daze, blinking away her dreams and reconvincing herself that _yes_, this is all real, this is all happening.

It takes some time for her to get used to not having the gloves on. She loves all the new sensations of the world against her skin – most mornings, she steps onto her balcony and sets her hands on the cold marble railing, feels the leaves of the houseplants around the castle, for a way to ground herself in her new reality before she gets on with her day. Sometimes, if she's stressed or anxious or hasn't slept, she catches herself flexing her hands, pulling at her fingertips in what had once been a familiar nervous tic, looking for fabric there but finding none.

Anna always notices when Elsa does that, often even before she realizes it herself. Her eyes flicker down to Elsa's hands, and she smiles and purses her lips and shake her head, and then she rests her hands over Elsa's, running her thumbs in circles over her palms to calm her, until Elsa is suffused with a warmth she never thought she'd get to feel.

There's a lot in her life now, actually, that she never thought she would have. Freedom, for one thing, and a populace that knows who she is and _doesn't fear her_; she remembers, clearly, the faces of her subjects when she made her first public appearance after her winter, the way they looked up at her with awe and respect, and Anna had leaned in and whispered _look, they love you_, and she wanted to cry. And she has a family now, messy and ragtag a bunch as they may be, Kristoff with his steady companionship and Olaf with his enduring, wide-eyed joy and Sven with his…well…she hasn't spent much time with Sven, to be honest, but he seems to like her well enough.

And she has _Anna_. Anna, who smiles at her like she matters and is always hugging her so fiercely she thinks she might break and who always smells like summer, somehow, like fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle. She'd thought she already knew what it was to love Anna, before, when she would listen to Anna ramble outside her bedroom door and dig her nails into her palms, so hard she'd bleed from it sometimes, to keep the ice from slipping out. But that was nothing, she realizes now – that was a hot, sickening kind of love, one that burned her up from the inside and left ashes in its wake.

This is different. This is warm, this is gentle, a soft light like that of dawn rather than the too-much brightness of a flame. It's like nothing she's ever had, and she never wants the feeling to end.

She savors everything about the time she gets to spend with Anna (which is still too scarce for her liking, what with meetings and paperwork and more meetings), even the way her name feels in her mouth. "Anna," she says in the morning, running her knuckles over Anna's cheekbone to wake her, and without fail, Anna opens one eye at a time and mumbles a happy _good morning_ and kisses Elsa's hand. Or, "_Anna_," an attempt at sternness when Anna bursts into her study with a tray of pastries ("You need a _break,_ Elsa!") that softens as soon as she perches herself on the desk and feeds Elsa chocolate cake, bit by bit. _Anna, Anna, Anna_, she says it over and over again, as much as she can, reacquainting herself to the unfamiliar feeling of saying it and having Anna actually _there_ with her.

And she says _I love you_, too, as much as she can, although she's sure it comes out too eager and too desperate. The words taste foreign to her, but she needs Anna to know.

"Can I sleep in here tonight?" Anna asks lightly one night, with a kind of forced casualness, when she's braiding Elsa's hair before bed. "Just – my room gets – cold at night, sometimes."

"If it's cold you're worried about, I'm not sure being near me will help," Elsa says.

"Oh, c'mon, that's not true." She ties up the end of the braid and kisses the top of her head. "You remember when we were little? I'd get cold or scared and you'd come over to my bed and cuddle with me?"

"I remember," Elsa says, smiling. "You snored so loud, even back then."

"I did not!"

"Kept me up all night."

"Well, never mind, then," Anna grumbles. "Wouldn't want to disturb Her Majesty's sleep."

"I'm just kidding," Elsa says, maybe a little too fast, because the thought of Anna thinking she doesn't want her around is unconscionable. "Of course you can sleep in here. If that's what you want."

"It is!" Anna chirps, and she's already sprawled out on the bed by the time Elsa cleans up her bureau and turns around. She loves how Anna can make any place home, just by being there; Elsa's had this room all her life but it hasn't felt like a place she could _live_ until right now, watching Anna pull the covers up to her chin and pat the spot next to her with more aggression than entirely necessary. (The downside to this is that no place could ever feel like home _without_ Anna. She wonders what she'll do when Anna inevitably gets married and moves away. She's had thirteen years to practice, at least.)

Elsa lies on her bed, not quite sure what to do with her hands or arms or legs with Anna so close. It's a process, getting used to touching freely, not having to fear poison seeping out from under her skin – she's not sure she could do it if it weren't for Anna, who is brazen and bold in all things.

"What are you doing all the way over there? You're all, like" – she raises her shoulders to her ears and clasps her hands together in a passable impression of Elsa – "stiff. You can come closer, you know."

Elsa scoots over just a little.

Anna raises an eyebrow. "I don't bite."

"Sorry. I just –" She shrugs and waves her hand, sending a spray of snowflakes that fly up and fall, melting on the bedsheet as soon as they touch it.

"Oh," Anna says.

"It's – I don't know," she says. "This is all so…new to me. Everything's new, and everything scares me."

"Scares you?" Anna says, and Elsa closes her eyes but she can still hear the way her voice softens into concern, and it makes her want to cry. "What scares you?"

"Just," she says, biting her lip against the tears suddenly burning her eyes, "this, us, you. Messing everything up again."

"You didn't mess anything up in the first place."

She opens her eyes at that, hoping they aren't too obviously red, just so she can roll them at Anna. "Seriously? Yes, I did." Anna makes a noncommittal sound. "And I just – I – I don't know." She laces their fingers together. "I want to be worthy of you," she says. "I want to be someone who deserves to have you in my life."

Anna studies her quietly, gaze flitting back and forth between her eyes. "You already are," she says.

"Hmm," Elsa says.

"You don't sound convinced."

"I'm not."

"Well, I don't care if you don't believe me. I'll keep telling you until you do."

"That could take a long time."

"Fine by me."

"A _very _long time."

"Elsa," Anna says. Elsa recognizes her tone – it's one of reproach, the one she uses to coax Elsa into bed when she's fallen asleep at her desk. "Okay, permission to be cheesy for a minute?"

"Granted."

"I love you," Anna says. Elsa opens her mouth to speak and Anna holds her hand up. "I'm not done."

"Okay," Elsa says.

"I love you, and I always have and I always will. And you're a good person, and you always have been and you always will be. And, seriously, Elsa, I can't pretend to understand all this stuff about, like, not deserving me – I mean, little old _me_, what?!"

"What? Don't talk about yourself like that."

"Not the point. The point is, I don't really get it, because to me you've always been the most incredible person I've ever known, and now that I _know _everything, you're, like, double incredible to me. You're so strong, Elsa. And you're – you're kind, and smart, and you make me laugh more than anyone else, and you're just, like, my favorite person to be around." Anna takes her hand and threads their fingers together; Elsa has to bite her lip to resist the impulse to flinch away. "And you're my sister, and I _love _you." She smiles expectantly at Elsa. "Still don't believe me?"

Elsa offers a weak smile in return. "It just might take a while."

"That's okay," Anna says. "I'll keep telling you. As long as it takes. For my whole life, if I have to."

Elsa just kisses her fingers, her wrist, her forehead. "Okay."

That's how they start spending their nights together: first sporadically, whenever Anna asks. Then it turns into a daily thing, an unspoken agreement between the two of them. Elsa begins to grow used to the weight of Anna's body next to her, until eventually she isn't even sure if she could go back to sleeping without it. They talk, gossip, giggle like little girls at a sleepover, nestled on their own pillows on their own sides of the bed. Then Elsa extinguishes the oil lamp with a wave of her hand, scoots closer to Anna inch by inch, until Anna laughs and gathers her up in her arms and holds her until she falls asleep.

It's new. Falling asleep in someone's arms, being this close to someone. The fact that it's Anna makes it easier and harder at the same time – easier because it's _Anna_, and it's so safe and easy and comfortable being around her; harder because it's Anna, and there's no one Elsa loves more, and the headiness of it scares her a little bit. Like it could be too much of a good thing, the way too much chocolate rots your teeth.

(And she knows it can't last forever. Anna will leave her. Anna will find someone else, and leave her. She knows this.)

They both seem to need this, though, at least for now. They get nightmares; Elsa's all involve Anna, cold and icy yet again through some fault of her magic, and when she startles awake it's the firm, thudding heartbeat under her ear that lulls her back to sleep. Anna's are rarer, and Elsa doesn't know what they're about, but every once in a while she wakes up to tears soaking through her nightgown and the sound of harsh, ragged gasps, and she wraps her arms tight around Anna and rocks her until her breathing steadies.

"I love you," she whispers into her hair, "I'm here, I've got you, I love you."

She starts to wonder how she ever survived without Anna. Anna was always the guiding beacon, the lighthouse of her life – _I'm doing this for her, to keep her safe_ – but for so long it'd just been in that theoretical way, and what kind of a life was it, not getting to see that smile every day? She'd been listless, cold, half-dead all those years.

But Anna is so _alive_. She is so much _more_. The rest of the world pales in comparison. When Elsa watches the sunset, she finds that its red-orange isn't half as vibrant as the color of Anna's hair; she compares the fjord's sparkling waters to Anna's eyes, the stars to the freckles on Anna's shoulders. Everything that isn't Anna just seems so dull.

"You're so beautiful," she tells her, when Anna steps out from behind her changing screen the day of the harvest festival.

Anna blushes down to her arms, which are bare. "O-oh! Thank you," she stammers. "I'm nothing compared to you, though."

"Stop that," Elsa says, in what Anna has started calling her Queen Voice. It never fails to make her smile.

"Don't tell me what to do," Anna says lightly, and Elsa sends a spray of snow her way with a flick of her wrist.

(It's exchanges like these, Elsa thinks, that fill her up with warmth, the casual banter in between all the dramatic declarations of love and loyalty that they've had to deal with recently. It's the way being around Anna seems to put her soul at ease.)

xxx

Perhaps her favorite thing about her newfound freedom – well, relatively speaking – is the ability to discover who she _really_ is, now that her energy is no longer tied up in hiding and concealing. She's found that she likes taking the occasional stroll down the cobblestone streets of Arendelle, making conversation with her citizens, feeling the breeze that blows in from the fjord. She'd always thought that Anna was the likable one, the one who excelled at small-talk and being loved, so it surprises her to learn that her people _like_ her, too (the children, especially, now that they know she has the ability to conjure ice-likenesses of anything they ask for). She's not sure she'll ever get used to being greeted with warm smiles and _how are you, Your Majesty_?-s.

In moments when she needs time to herself – she still tends toward the introspective more often than not – she steps onto what has become her favorite balcony, the one that faces out onto the town square. She stands there the evening after the harvest festival, full of the good food and wine and laughter of the day, and watches Kristoff, down below, attempt to put his arm around Anna. He reaches out, then lowers his arm, then reaches out again, and then finally succeeds, wraps his big hand gently around her shoulder.

It's sweet. Kristoff is a good man. But something in Elsa shrinks when she sees the way Anna smiles up at him, so tender and soft, a look she normally reserves for Elsa.

But jealousy is a base, ugly emotion, and the possessiveness brewing underneath it is even uglier, a strange beast that sinks its claws into her at the first thought of Anna. It isn't becoming of a queen, and it certainly isn't becoming of someone who loves her sister and wants only the best for her. And what does she expect, anyway – for Anna to waste away her life coddling her, just because Elsa is too broken to imagine a future sleeping next to anyone else but her? Anna deserves more; Anna deserves her fairytale ending, love and marriage and a prince and a family.

(Years later, when all she has is reminiscences of better days, she will look back and try to pinpoint the moment she began falling in love. It proves to be an impossible task. It feels like she has spent her whole life falling in love with Anna.)

She resolves not to think too much about what all this may mean, and to present an outward face of nothing less than unbridled joy about whatever Anna wants her life to become, even when it inevitably means her growing further and further from Elsa. She keeps telling herself – she's lucky enough to have Anna in her life in _any_ capacity, lucky enough that Anna ever loved her enough to follow her through thirteen years of silence and running away.

Despite her best efforts, Anna, perceptive as she is, notices, before Elsa has even had the time to think it through and give it words.

"Is everything okay?" she asks one evening. They're in Anna's bedroom, Anna laid up against dozens of pillows while Elsa changes a bandage on her arm (from an accident involving her first jaunt in Kristoff's sled without his presence there, as Anna had explained sheepishly).

"With me?" Elsa says delicately. Anna winces as Elsa applies antiseptic ointment, shifting away from her. "You have to stay _still_, Anna, or it'll hurt even more."

"Sorry, sorry! Just, the ointment burns. And yes, with you."

Elsa conjures up a block of ice, one that's already starting to melt so it isn't too cold, wraps it up in a corner of her blanket, and presses it to the red skin around Anna's wound. Anna hisses with relief. "There. Is that better?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"You need to be more careful," Elsa says. Anna opens her mouth to speak, but Elsa raises her hand to cut her off before she can. "I know, I know, I say this every time, but you could've gotten seriously _hurt_, and –" Her voice catches, an image coming to her mind, unbidden: Anna frozen on the ice, dead, for her, for _her, dead_ –

The fiery look in Anna's eyes softens. "I know." She smiles as Elsa finishes wrapping a clean bandage around her arm and places a gentle kiss on her forehead. "But, okay, look, it's not like you're great at taking care yourself either."

"Well, I certainly don't make it a point to spend my free time doing idiotic things at the expense of my own health."

"Remember my birthday?" Anna says, one eyebrow quirked.

Elsa rolls her eyes. "That's different."

"Not really. You can be reckless too."

"That was for _you_."

"That doesn't make it any better! It makes it worse!"

Elsa makes a noncommittal sound as she rises from the bed, puttering around with the medical supplies she'd laid out, ostensibly to clean things up but mostly just to avoid Anna's gaze.

"Hey," Anna says. "You never answered my question."

"Oh, right." She continues packing up.

Anna laughs. "You're – are you serious? You're still not gonna say anything?"

"Yes," she says, with full knowledge that it doesn't sound at all convincing, "everything is okay. Why? Does it seem like something's wrong?"

"Um, yeah. You've been kinda quiet lately, and you keep staying up super late working, which is typical, I guess, but the last couple of nights I've been waking up at, like, two or three in the morning and you're still not in bed –"

Elsa looks up from her work, alarmed. "What? Have you not been sleeping well?"

"Oh my _God_. We're talking about you right now, okay?"

"Fine."

"And you just – I don't know, it sounds stupid. But I just have this feeling something's off with you. You look so sad all the time, and you get that little crease in your forehead when you're really worried about something, which – oh, it's there right now, even."

Oh. She releases the tension from her forehead. "I…I don't know. I'm anxious about the kingdom, I suppose. There's been so much to do lately. Those…trade negotiations coming up, you know? You're right, I haven't been sleeping much. I think it's just that."

Anna gives her a hard, searching look. Quietly, she says, "You know you don't have to hide anything from me anymore, right?" She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, a gesture Elsa has now learned means she's nervous. "I mean, I – I understand if you just don't want to tell me. I get it. But there's nothing you, like, _have _to hide from me, okay?"

God, Elsa really doesn't deserve her. "I love you."

Anna smiles. "I love you too. Now get over here and brush my hair. I'm indisposed."

xxx

Elsa tells her the truth, eventually. Or, well, part of the truth, the part that she has come to understand, the part that she can put words to without shame threatening to boil up and into tears.

It happens at a wedding reception – she can't even recall the names of the bride and groom, just their titles, and the fact that the attendance of the royal family is all-but required. She stands by herself in the ballroom, a glass of champagne clutched protectively to her chest as she goes through the motions of polite conversation with each of the nobles that surround her in an effort to ingratiate themselves with her. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Anna dance with Kristoff, the way his hand curls around her waist and the smile on her face as she gazes up at him.

She needs to get some air, she thinks. She leaves the ballroom and finds the nearest exit, a little veranda that looks out onto a small lake surrounded by gardens. Fireflies buzz and glow in the near-dark of the evening, and the air smells of smoke and food. In practically every way, it's a beautiful evening, but the pit of unease that sits in her stomach is stubborn, and remains no matter what she tells herself.

Anna finds her out there, because of course she does, conjuring up the largest columns of ice she can and sending them flying out into the far end of the lake. "Hey," she says. "Whatcha doin'?"

"Blowing off steam," Elsa says, as her latest ice creation creates a particularly loud splash when it falls.

"By, um, doing…what, exactly?"

She lowers her hands, and Anna takes one in her own. "Sometimes, if I haven't used a lot of magic in a while, it gets to be…too much, almost. It sort of builds up, like excess energy. Makes me feel uneasy, jittery." She flicks her hand again as an example. Ice cascades into the lake. "This is how I let it out."

"Oh. Cool. Do you do this a lot?"

"Maybe once a month or so," Elsa says. "I usually just go out to the fjord, somewhere people can't see."

"Can I come along next time?" Anna's eyes are lit up in that familiar way, like when they were children. "I wanna watch."

"Of course." Elsa smiles, but then it falters. "Anna, I –" She swallows. "You were right."

"Hm? I mean, yeah, I usually am, but what?"

"Something – something is wrong."

Anna rubs her thumb across Elsa's knuckles. "What is it?"

She looks out at the lake, not sure where exactly to start. There's so much she could say and yet she finds it's impossible to figure out a coherent way to say it all.

"This wedding, it – it was so beautiful. They seemed so happy. And mama and papa, and you and Kristoff, you –" She's babbling nonsensically, so she pauses to take a breath. "I'm afraid I won't – I won't get to have any of that. I want it. I do. It's stupid, but I want it so badly, love and – and all of that, I just. I'm afraid I'll always be alone."

"What? Why?" Anna dips her head to catch her eye. "I mean, anyone would be lucky to have you, Elsa, you're smart and kind and funny and, like, insanely beautiful, there's gotta be tons of guys out there who'd line up for your hand! We just have to find you the right one!"

She shakes her head almost imperceptibly.

"No? Okay, come on, if I could find love then you definitely can. Look at you."

"No," Elsa says. "I don't want just – just any suitor out there." Maybe Anna will pick up on her meaning without her having to actually say anything.

"Okay," Anna says, staring at her blankly, expectantly.

"I already – there's already someone I think I might – I think –"

"Wait, wait!" Anna gasps. "There's already someone?! Who is he? What's his name?" She turns back toward the party, squinting. "It's Lord Asbury, isn't it? I saw the sparks flying while you guys were talking."

"No, Anna, it's –" She takes a deep breath, lowers her voice to a whisper. "It's not that. Um. It's hard for me to say it."

"Well, whatever it is, it's okay. You can tell me anything."

"I think there's something wrong with me," she continues, a lump rising in her throat. "I think I'm, ah, broken, somehow."

"What? Why?"

She looks away, blinking furiously. When did she start tearing up? "It's – I want – it's a _woman_."

It's enough of the truth, probably.

Anna's face goes blank. For a moment, she doesn't say anything, and Elsa is seized with cold, cold terror. This was stupid. She shouldn't have said anything. How could she have been so stupid? She's already a freak, an anomaly, and now here's one more thing, one more difference between them.

"Oh," Anna says.

Elsa laughs humorlessly. "_Oh_, indeed."

"I…" There's something unreadable on Anna's face. _Say something,_ Elsa thinks, _please, please say something_. "Well, that's…that's okay, first of all, although I don't know if you need me to tell you that."

Elsa blinks down at the ground.

"And, hey," Anna says, her voice gentler now, her touch painfully hot on Elsa's hands. "There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken."

Elsa looks up into Anna's eyes, then. She wishes she was half as perceptive as her, that she could read what's going on in Anna's mind, why she's looking at her with that curious mix of love and fear. "Yes, I am, I'm –"

"Who is it?" Anna's tone is urgent. "Sorry, um, you don't have to say, but…who is it? The girl?"

Elsa opens her mouth, closes it, clears her throat, trying to buy time so she can make up an acceptable answer, when they're interrupted by Kristoff's voice, booming from the door to the veranda. "Hey!" he says, and Elsa breathes a private sigh of relief. "Why'd you guys disappear? Been looking for you everywhere!"

"Kristoff," Elsa smiles, but Anna's eyes are still on her. "You two go back inside. I'll join you in a bit."

She watches as Anna blinks and seems to come back to herself. Kristoff takes her hand, so small in his, and guides her across the veranda and through the door, and Elsa wonders if she's imagining the way Anna glances back at her.


	11. reaching in the dark

There's a brief, blissful moment the next morning, as Anna wakes, during which she can't remember or think of anything but Elsa's presence, so warm and wonderful and real in bed next to her. Her cheek presses against the bare skin of a slim sternum; fingers weave absently through her hair. She could stay here forever. They don't really have to go back, do they? They could just stay here, and her world could shrink to encapsulate nothing more than the steady sound of Elsa's heartbeat under her.

She keeps her eyes closed for just a bit longer, pretending to be asleep, not quite ready to be forced to face reality again. Then she feels around in the sheets for Elsa's hand, as if searching for a tether to pull her back, and laces their fingers together before letting her eyes blink open.

"Hi," she whispers into the fabric of Elsa's nightgown.

"Good morning," Elsa says. She presses the briefest, lightest of kisses into the top of Anna's head.

"How long have you been awake?" she asks, hoping Elsa hasn't been waiting around for too long while she slept in.

"Not long," Elsa says, but Anna pushes herself up on her elbows to look at the alarm clock, which flashes 11:00 AM at her.

She groans and collapses back onto Elsa's chest. "That's a lie. You're an early bird."

"I woke up around eight," Elsa admits.

"Eight?! You've just been lying here since eight?" She kisses Elsa's knuckles and receives a pleased hum in response.

"I didn't want to wake you by getting up," Elsa says, but Anna's already distracted, inspecting a suspicious wet spot on Elsa's gown, close to where her mouth was.

"Oh my god, ew, I _drooled_ on you!" she says. "God, I'm so sorry. Ugh."

Elsa just giggles. "You know, to be honest, I noticed that was happening, but…" She bites her lip. "You were already asleep and you looked so peaceful. I didn't want to disturb you."

"You're sweet," Anna says. The idea of Elsa watching her drool all over the place and choosing not to do anything about it is equal parts endearing and terribly embarrassing. "I should've warned you. You were kinda right in the splash zone."

"Yes, well," Elsa says, and Anna can hear the smile in her voice. "Next time, I'll –"

She stops herself abruptly, her voice catching, and Anna's about to ask why when it clicks.

"You don't plan on there being a next time, do you?" she asks softly.

The hand that Elsa's been running through Anna's hair stills. The resulting silence is all the answer Anna needs. She could dig deeper into it, rehash what already feels like a tired conversation until something between them snaps like last night, but it feels so _nice_ laying there and feigning ignorance, so she just turns her face into Elsa's neck and closes her eyes.

They get dressed and ready for the day in relative silence. Anna sits on the edge of the bed and watches TV as she waits for Elsa to get done in the bathroom; she listens to the shower start and tries not to think about how the only thing separating them right now is a door.

"Hurry up in there," she calls, after twenty minutes have passed and the sound of the water's spray hasn't stopped. Elsa yells something back, and Anna can't make out the exact words, but she can hear a playful irritation in the snap of Elsa's voice that makes her laugh.

This is good. This is warm, and solid, and it feels safe.

That's what she needs to keep telling herself – that chasing the heat between them risks burning down the genuine friendship underneath – no matter how good Elsa looks when she comes out of the bathroom with her hair loose and dripping, her towel slung over her shoulder, makeup washed off so that she looks much younger than usual.

"God, you take long showers," Anna says.

"What can I say? I'm a hedonist."

"Is that why you wake up so early? So you have an extra three hours of time to spend in the bathroom?"

Elsa laughs and flicks her towel at Anna, probably with the intention of snapping her with it, but instead it flies out of her hand and lands on Anna's face. "Oh! Sorry. That's not what I meant to do."

"Not sure I believe you," Anna says, smiling. She watches as Elsa turns toward the mirror by the closet, kneels to plug in a hairdryer, frowns at the settings on it before jabbing a button with one finger to turn it on. She's never been this fascinated by a person before, but all the little intricacies of the way Elsa moves about the world are just – well, she isn't sure what the word for it would be. Enchanting, enthralling – it's more than lust, for sure.

Elsa dries her hair meticulously, combing her fingers through it to brush it out. It falls to her waist.

"Can I braid your hair for you?" Anna asks, suddenly, the idea just a formless thought until she puts it into words, and then it's all she wants.

"Of course," Elsa says, and Anna scrambles off the bed to stand behind Elsa, tripping over herself in her eagerness, a magnet spinning and starting in its haste to reach a complementary pole. Elsa's wearing another top that exposes the sharp jut of her shoulder blades, and Anna wonders if she owns anything else, if she knows just how beautiful she is. She gathers bunches of white-blonde hair in her hands and weaves them around each other, taking care to touch Elsa's skin as little as possible; she's clumsy, though, so her knuckles brush against the smooth porcelain of Elsa's back despite her best efforts. They both shiver when it happens, each contact bringing Anna closer and closer to the brink, the knife-edge of the line they had silently established after last night. There's something about this action that's oddly, achingly familiar: the feeling of Elsa's hair in her hands, the ease with which it gives way when she runs her hand through it, rather than knotting and tangling like Anna's own. She likes the gentle intimacy of it, of taking care of Elsa even in this small way.

What happened last night, Anna reminds herself, was a one-off, an indulgence that they needed to release the tension in the cord tethering them together, which is already fragile enough as it is. Like the whistle on a pressure cooker, going off spectacularly when the steam inside builds up and needs release. She recalls Elsa's words, the seriousness with which Elsa had told her, _Just for tonight_.

None of the knowledge is enough to stop her, after she's finished with Elsa's braid and tied it up at the end, from leaning into to press a single, feather-light kiss to the back of her neck.

(It was probably stupid of her to even stand this close in the first place, and the helplessly open expression Elsa's wearing, reflected back to Anna in the mirror, makes it impossible for her to resist.)

Elsa sighs, and her shoulders slump – Anna hadn't even realized that Elsa had been holding them up so stiffly, bunched around her ears.

"Sorry," Anna whispers, even though she isn't.

"Don't," Elsa says quietly, and Anna isn't sure if she's talking about the apology or the kiss.

"You look really good today," Anna mutters, fiddling absently with the end of Elsa's braid. "You're, like, radiant."

Elsa just looks at her through the mirror, making eye contact with her reflection, with those expressive eyes, until finally she says, "I think we should make the drive back tomorrow."

Well. "Oh. Um, okay." Anna knew this was coming, but she's more disappointed than she thought she'd be, especially when she keeps torpedoing any chance at a normal connection with Elsa by pushing her like this.

"Something has come up with work," Elsa offers, even though Anna hasn't protested.

"Yeah, of course. I get it."

"It's nothing personal. Nothing to do with – "

"Right, yeah, no, I figured." Anna's babbling now, in her haste to staunch Elsa's flow of reasons. She doesn't owe Anna anything, shouldn't feel pressured to explain, right?

The tension between them is back, the cord pulled taut again.

They go to breakfast at a crepe place, and Elsa orders her a disgustingly sweet confection piled with syrup and powdered sugar without having to ask what she wants, and Anna rambles mindlessly while Elsa smiles benignly from across the table, and they pretend nothing's different.

xxx

They only manage to keep up this stupid dance until, like, lunchtime, which Anna thinks is still pretty admirable.

What breaks them is a little spot of ice cream – Ben and Jerry's rocky road, from a pint that Anna bought in the hotel lobby on their way back to the room – that lingers on the corner of Anna's mouth after she's done eating. Elsa swipes it away with a brush of her thumb, so gentle, like Anna is something fragile and easily breakable. Her hand rests on Anna's jaw for a moment too long, and Elsa just sits there and _looks_ at her, just smiles when Anna says, "What? Is there something on my face?", and in a rush of heat and movement they're kissing again. It's so easy, kissing Elsa, being close to her like this, clutching the cotton of her blouse like it's her only lifeline to this world.

"I can't keep doing this," Elsa says, even as she pushes her face into the crook of Anna's neck – doesn't kiss her, just presses the warmth of her lips and nose to Anna's skin, inhaling deeply like an addict smoking their drug of choice.

"I know," Anna says, carding her fingers through Elsa's hair, which falls around them in great, billowing tresses, already out of its braid.

Elsa traces a path up Anna's neck until she reaches the place behind her ear where wispy curls signal the start of her hairline, and again she does that deep-breathing thing instead of kissing her. It's headier than a kiss, slow and sweet, and it makes Anna feel like she's being savored. Relished, rather than consumed. She doesn't even need the physicality of their friendship to go beyond this; it's enough just to be this close to Elsa.

They break apart long enough to go do dinner, smoothing down their messed-up clothes, Elsa coughing awkwardly as she puts her hair back in place. Anna should have known that it would be impossible to come together just _once_ and then stay away. The dam has broken; the ensuing flood is inevitable. After dinner, they stumble back to Elsa's hotel room, clumsy in their haste to be alone; Anna slams the door shut and has Elsa pressed up against it before either of them has a chance to say something logical. There's something desperate about it, something raw and wild that scares Anna as much as it thrills her.

"I don't want to go back," she finds herself saying, later, after the fire has calmed.

"Hmm?" Elsa's answering hum vibrates against her earlobe.

She doesn't know how to articulate what she's really thinking, which is that she knows without the weird liminal space of a hotel room, the excuse of being on the road together, the mysterious motivation pulling Elsa away from her will win out and she'll become just a memory of a few blissful days spent together.

Instead, she says, "I want to keep seeing you. After I get home."

The puff of Elsa's cold breath on her raises goosebumps across her skin. "Why?"

Jesus. Again with the blunt questions that force Anna to be way more honest than she means to be. "Because," she says. "I like you?"

"Is that a question?"

"Um, no." Of course not, she thinks. "Does it have to be any deeper than that, though? It's not enough just that I like you and I want to get to know you better?"

Elsa doesn't say anything, just pulls back to study Anna's face with a careful, searching expression.

"It scares me," Anna says, "the way I feel about you. I don't understand it. Like – not even in a romantic sense, or anything, but just – it feels like having you in my life, having you like me and want me too, is the most important thing in my world all of a sudden. But obviously you're, y'know – going through some stuff, and I can already feel myself panicking a little whenever you start to pull away. And I don't know _why_, but, I mean. It's what I feel."

Elsa purses her lips, and the little tell-tale crease appears between her eyebrows, the one that means she's thinking hard, has something to say but won't. "I know what you mean," she says, quietly.

They leave it at that. Increasingly, everything Elsa says to her has this weird, fatalistic cast to it. It all sounds like the prelude to a goodbye, and Anna can't find it in herself to interrogate it any further.

In her dreams that night, she stands in front of a wooden door painted blue-and white, and knocks and knocks and knocks, and never gets an answer. She wakes up shivering, feels blindly around on the bed to make sure Elsa's still there, and when her fingers meet cool skin she feels a surge of relief so powerful it makes her head spin.

She can't fall back asleep until she wraps an arm around Elsa's midsection, rising and falling steadily in sleep, anchoring Anna to reality.

In the morning, Anna lies in what has now become their shared bed while Elsa takes her customary long shower, watches dust motes dance in the sunlight filtering through the Venetian blinds' slats, and thinks. (She hates thinking, hates ruminating. What good does it do to marinate in your thoughts when you could just, you know, _do_ instead? But this is a situation that requires careful thought.)

By the time she hears the water shut off, Anna has made up her mind: she would be stupid to just let Elsa _go_, just like that, and besides, it doesn't feel like a choice so much as accepting the inevitable. She remembers a demonstration in seventh-grade science class, iron fillings scattered across her teacher's table, random and purposeless at first but immediately jumping to order when a magnet was waved over them; it had always fascinated her, how things could move and follow not of their own accord but as a result of some larger law of nature outside of themselves.

She thinks she understands now, watching Elsa, how everything in her stands at attention and follows when Elsa speaks.

The bathroom door clicks open, and Anna shuts her eyes, just so Elsa doesn't think she's been awake all this time without packing or getting ready or doing anything other than roll around in bed. (Just for good measure, she goes back to taking deep, even breaths, like she's actually asleep.)

The bed sinks beneath her. Elsa must have sat down, right in the crescent of space where Anna's body curves away from the edge of the bed. Something soft ghosts over the skin of her cheek, skimming so lightly she can barely feel the touch on her peach fuzz. She imagines Elsa sitting next to her, tracing the lines of her face but taking care not to wake her up, and blinks her eyes open like she's just now stirring from sleep.

"Hi there," Elsa says. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't," Anna yawns. "And I should be getting up anyway. Your hands are freezing, by the way."

"Warm them up for me?"

She smiles and clasps her hands around Elsa's, rubs at them ineffectually and presses them back onto her face.

"Did it work?" Elsa says.

"Nope! Still cold. But I'm kind of hot under all these blankets anyway, so it works out." She pulls the comforter tighter around herself as if to prove her point. "Wanna join me?"

The placidity of Elsa's smile starts draining from her face, predictably, as a melancholy kind of panic comes in to replace it. "I'm not done packing."

"So?" Anna says, pushing herself onto her elbows, propping her head up on her hand. "It's only" – she glances at the clock – "nine, and we don't check out till, like, twelve."

Elsa regards her skeptically. The little frown-crease is back on her forehead, and for all her nervous lip-chewing and artificial distance, her body slants toward Anna's like it already knows what it wants. Maybe, Anna thinks, Elsa is someone who needs to be convinced it's okay to let herself have what she wants, who needs a little push to flow in the direction of her desires, just needs a nudge into the current like a boat caught between rocks in a river.

"I want to hold you," Anna says, "just for a little bit," and that must be the right combination of words, because Elsa groans softly to herself and lies down, nestled right in the crook of Anna's hips. Elsa's wearing jeans today, which look weirdly anachronistic on her – the lines of Elsa's hips and waist seem better suited to dresses and skirts than skin-tight denim.

The heavy grit of the fabric brushes against Anna's bare legs like sandpaper, but she pushes herself closer anyway, snaking an arm around Elsa's waist and settling against her back. She kisses, once, behind Elsa's ear, waits for the familiar softening of Elsa's stiff posture in response, and strokes Elsa's hair, humming absently as she does so.

Outside, she can hear the world coming awake, room doors opening and closing, kids shrieking and laughing while parents yell at them to quiet down, the _ding_ of the elevator arriving on their floor. It's all a bit muffled by the barrier of the door, but not quite enough, Anna thinks, not enough to inoculate their peaceful little bubble from the rest of the world.

xxx

"So," Anna says, an hour into their drive back, "did you end up finding whatever it is you were looking for on the East Coast?"

Elsa starts, so violently that she jerks the wheel a little to the side. "W-what do you mean?"

"I think I remember when I asked you why you were there, you said something about just wanting something new, or wanting a break from work or something. Some kind of self-discovery stuff like that. Right? I could be making that up."

"Oh," Elsa says. "Right."

"So? Did you, like, find yourself or whatever? Was your trip…um, fruitful?"

Elsa smiles, and although her eyes remain fixed on the road, Anna can tell it's a smile meant for her. Or it could be wishful thinking. But she's pretty sure she's seen that exact smile directed toward her before.

"Yes," Elsa says, "I think so."

Anna giggles. "Okay, good. Me too."

Elsa looks over and raises an eyebrow. "Oh, did you think I was talking about meeting you?"

Wait, what? "Um. Uh –"

"Because I wasn't," Elsa says. "I was actually talking about all the lobster rolls I got to eat there."

Anna stares blankly at her. Elsa laughs.

"And the clam chowder," Elsa adds. "The clam chowder changed me as well."

"God, I hate you. I was being sincere!" Anna groans. "You think you're _so_ funny."

"You don't think so?"

"No." She scoffs and tries to suppress a giggle.

"Wait, I – for the record, I was kidding." Elsa pouts at her. It's adorable. "Really."

Her face is so earnest, so serious, like she's genuinely concerned she might have hurt Anna's feelings, somehow. It makes Anna want to pinch her cheeks.

"To be honest, I didn't really know what I was looking for, out there," Elsa says. "I was mostly just…following a feeling, I guess." She looks at Anna, and the tenderness written in her face makes Anna's throat feel like it's closing up. "I'm glad it led me to you."

"Stay in my life," Anna says, suddenly, hastily. "Please. I've – I've never met anyone else like you. Ever."

Elsa's silent for a long moment, and when she finally speaks, it's to say, simply, "We can talk more once we get you home."

xxx

Anna's parents' house is exactly as she remembered. She hasn't been back in _years, _which she realizes with a pang as she takes in the details from the passenger seat of Elsa's car as they pull up to the curb. The front door is still an ugly periwinkle-blue, with a little ceramic sign hanging below the peephole that says THE ANDERSENS in heavy block letters; the grass is still a little longer than it should be, always the winner in her dad's eternal battle against it.

It's home.

After some very emotional greetings – tears from both Anna and her mom, while her dad and Elsa stand off to side, clearing their throats uncomfortably – her mom instructs Elsa that she'll be staying for dinner whether she likes it or not. Anna's pleasantly surprised by how polite Elsa is with her parents; she's playing the part of the new boyfriend out to impress, Anna thinks, offering to help with the cooking, complimenting her mom's décor, engaging in some surprisingly heated political discussion with her dad, who's got Fox News on the TV just so he can yell about how Republicans are ruining the country.

"I think they think we're, like, a thing," Anna whispers to her, when her parents are both busy in the kitchen. They're seated on the loveseat, each on their own cushion, and despite Anna's best efforts Elsa will _not_ allow any part of their bodies to touch.

"A thing? What kind of thing?"

"You know. A _thing_."

"Oh." Elsa considers this for a moment. "You think they think we're together?" Anna nods, and Elsa asks, "And that's okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's – they don't – I mean, you know. They don't care? That I'm a" – she lowers her voice to a whisper – "woman?"

"Oh, God, no. I guess that's a fair question. But no. They don't." Anna smiles. "My dad shook your hand, like, really aggressively earlier. I think he felt threatened by your, uh, masculinity."

Elsa snorts. "He did have a very firm grip."

She lets herself, for a minute, settle into the comfort of the moment, the ease of laughing with Elsa, the smell of her mom's cooking wafting in from the kitchen. Then, when she can no longer _not_ say what she's thinking, she asks, in a voice that comes out all too meek, "_Are _we a thing?"

Elsa looks down at her hands for a moment. "I have to tell you something," she says, finally.

"What is it?" Anna says, maybe a little too eagerly.

"I –" Elsa starts, but _right then_ her mom calls out that dinner's ready, and _fuck _Elsa had been so _close _to actually telling her something for once, she knows it, she can feel it.

"Will you girls come help me set the table?" her mom calls. Elsa gets up, but Anna grabs her wrist before she can walk away. She's stunned, every time she touches Elsa, by how fragile she feels, how brittle; she can feel the bones of her wrist, under skin that seems even colder than usual.

When Elsa turns around – face guileless and open, braid over one shoulder – it takes Anna a moment to recalibrate herself, to keep from grabbing Elsa by the collar and pulling her in.

"We can talk more later, right?" Anna says. "You can spend the night, if you want. I have a big bed. Or I'll make up the guest room for you."

"I would like that," Elsa says, the corner of her mouth turning up, not quite enough to be a smile but just enough to give her lips that crooked-smirk slant that Anna loves so much.

She thinks it's probably progress that Elsa actually said yes, for once.

Dinner is all of Anna's favorites – chicken pot pie, a side of brown sugar glazed carrots, home-baked rolls smothered in shallot butter. The spread reminds her of the room-service breakfast Elsa ordered for her, and the wine, and the chocolate muffin, and everything else Elsa did for her without her having to ask. She wonders what she ever did to deserve so many people in her life who care so much, so simply.

They eat slowly – Anna's mom is just as talkative and she is, and they have months of goings-on to catch each other up on. Her dad nods along and offers words of advice or agreement occasionally; out of the corner of her eye, Anna sees him and Elsa share a small, knowing smile when Anna gesticulates a little too wildly and sends her fork flying. It sparks a flutter of warmth in her belly. Elsa already seems to know and like all her weird little quirks – of which there are _many_ – with the same sort of familiarity that comes from her parents, the sort of slow-cooked love that takes a lifetime to grow but seems to have sprouted out of nowhere with Elsa.

Love. Now there's a word that has absolutely no business existing in the same thought as Elsa. There's a word that has no business existing in her lexicon right now at all, actually, because didn't she spend the last five-odd years of her life thinking she was in love and being wrong about it and – well, okay, no, that's not what's happening here. It's not even remotely close.

"Earth to Anna," Elsa says, when everyone's done eating and her parents are busy clearing the table. "You in there?"

"Hm?" Anna says. "Yeah, um, sorry. Just. Zoned out for a bit there. Thinking."

"_Thinking_, are we?" Elsa says, with a needlessly dramatic affectation of surprise. "Don't hurt yourself."

"Rude." Anna swats at her; Elsa dodges her hand with a giggle. "Someone's in a good mood tonight."

"It was that _incredible_ dinner, I think," Elsa says, loud enough for Anna's mom to hear.

"You're a ham," Anna mutters with an eye-roll, and Elsa just winks at her.

She makes up the guest room – fluffs the pillows, puts out a glass of water and some chocolate on the bedside table, finds the biggest fan in the house and hauls it over to the bed, because she knows Elsa likes it cold and their AC has been on the fritz for a while now – and retreats to her own room afterward.

She can't sit still, though. Her body itches to get up, walk the ten steps to Elsa's room, open the door without knocking. Just to be there next to her. But she forces herself to sit still, perched on her old four-poster with her legs dangling off the edge, partly to give Elsa space but also because she just wants to see if, given the chance, Elsa will come to her instead.

Anna has to tell her. She doesn't know what exactly she'll say; she'll talk about her feelings, obviously, how she's never felt like this about a person before, so quickly, so strong, how she'd be dumb to let this go, how she can't let Elsa slip through her fingers (_again?_, something in her mind insists).

At a quarter till midnight – not that Anna's keeping track of how long it takes – there's a knock at her door.

"It's me," Elsa calls, as if it could have been anyone else.

"You can come in."

"Your parents are very kind," Elsa says as she settles on the bed, keeping a suitably chaste distance from Anna. "Someone left chocolate at my bedside."

Anna rolls her eyes. "That was me."

Elsa smiles, but it slips from her face too quickly. "You wanted to talk to me."

"Yeah. Um. I had a lot I wanted to say, but I just forgot it all."

"There's something I need to tell you," Elsa says, as if she hadn't heard Anna at all.

"Guess that makes us even, then."

"You can go first."

She draws a deep breath. "Okay, so. Like I said. I've been thinking."

The trouble with Elsa, she thinks, is that there is so _much_ to her, uncharted depths below the surface. Anna could drown in her, if she let herself. She wants to be closer.

"It's just…I feel this _pull _to you. I keep trying to tell myself it's not real, or that it's me being dumb, but it's there. And I know the smart thing to do would probably be to stay single for a while," she says. "Figure myself out, learn how to be alone, whatever. I know how stupid it is to jump headfirst into something new right on the tail-end of a failed relationship." She looks down at their joined hands. "But...I dunno. It feels like this is somehow bigger than that. Bigger than just...what I want, or what I think would be best. It feels like I don't really have a choice, like no matter what I do it'll just lead me back to you."

"It's not just you." Elsa frowns and looks away, her gaze distant and detached, like she's living out a different moment than the one playing out in front of her. "I feel it too, this...pull. This gravity." She barks out a laugh, humorless and dry. "I don't think I could help myself if I tried."

"I'm pretty irresistible."

"That you are." She leans in to place a gentle, delicate kiss on the soft spot behind Anna's ear. "I'm trapped in your orbit."

"Ooh. Very poetic."

Elsa rests her head in the crook of Anna's shoulder, and for a moment, Anna is hopeful. They agree, it's settled – no more of this torturous back-and-forth, and they can go about their lives like normal, together, the way it should be. But then Elsa opens her mouth, and Anna feels her breath against her skin, shaky, shuddery, like she's on the verge of tears.

"But, Anna," Elsa starts, "just because we both feel it doesn't mean it's good for you, it doesn't mean you have to listen to it."

"What does that mean?"

"It means – well, at the risk of being trite – what happens when a gravitational pull becomes too strong?"

Anna says nothing, just prays that Elsa will stop talking. Please, God, just stop talking, let her have this –

"It creates a, a singularity. A black hole. Just - it mutates into something that nothing can escape, something that consumes everything, destroys everything, collapses in on itself and – and –"

"Hey, hey, slow down," Anna says, because she knows when Elsa leaps and trips over her sentences like this, it's because she's panicking. "I think maybe you're taking this metaphor a little too far."

"I don't want to do that you," Elsa whispers. Her voice breaks and catches. "I don't want to be that for you, I don't want to ruin you."

"You won't," she says, with more confidence than she actually feels. Elsa looks at her like she wants nothing more than to believe her. "Can we just try? Please?"

"Anna, I…" Her throat bobs as she swallows. She studies her hands, picking at her nails. "I haven't been totally honest with you."

A hollow feeling opens up at the base of Anna's stomach, even though Elsa hasn't actually said anything bad yet. "Okay." She reaches out, for Elsa's hands or her cheek or something, anything to ground her there, but Elsa stands and moves so she's out of reach.

"I don't know how to make this make sense," Elsa says.

"It doesn't have to make sense. Just talk. I'll listen."

Elsa paces a track along the long edge of Anna's bed. Anna counts: three steps forward, turn, three steps back. "I lost my sister," Elsa begins. "A long time ago."

She thinks about the blue-white door from her dream. "I'm sorry," she says, but the words feel strange. Mechanical.

"Don't. That's not the point. It's just –"

"Hey." Anna takes her hands before she can turn away again, pulls her close, so she's almost standing in the bracket of Anna's knees. "Sit by me."

She does, this time so that her knee is brushing Anna's. She stares straight ahead as she talks, though, avoiding Anna's attempts to meet her gaze. "She was," she says, before her voice catches. "We were very close."

The obvious question to ask here would be _what does this have to do with me?_, but Anna can't help but feel like she should already know, like she's got all the pieces of a puzzle she can't solve. "What was she like?"

Elsa gives her an odd look. "Warm," she says. "Bright. Kind. I…" She laughs in that choked, awkward way you laugh when it's a last-ditch attempt to keep from crying. "I used to tell her she was like a sunbeam came down to earth and became a person."

"That's so cheesy," Anna says. She separates Elsa's hands, slots their fingers together.

"That's what she would say, too."

It feels like they're following a script, here. What should her next question be? _What happened to her?_ She's not sure she needs to ask.

"Anyway," Elsa says. Her voice is thick, rough. "It's been a long, long time. But it's just – you – you remind me of her." She clears her throat. "So. You know. It's – this is – hard, for me."

Elsa looks so fragile, hunched into herself with one hand wrapped around her stomach, chewing on one red lip and blinking nervously up at Anna. She wraps an arm around Elsa's shoulders and pulls her in until her head is resting against her chest, stray hairs from her braid tickling Anna's arms. Her skin is so _cold_. It seeps through her nightgown and chills Anna's bones.

"Not sure I want to be someone who reminds you of your sister," she jokes, just to ease the tension. Elsa chuckles, and it's only when the sound comes out wet and stuttering that Anna realizes she's crying.

"You remind me so much of her," she says again. The cotton of Anna's t-shirt tickles her belly where Elsa curls her fingers into it; she can feel just the ghost of her touch against her skin.

"Is that why you're so weird around me?"

"Weird?"

"Like, I dunno. It's obvious you like me. It's obvious we like each other a stupid amount. But we keep doing this dance, and you keep telling me why it can't work out, even though you can't keep your hands off me and I feel, like, more _myself_ around you than I do even when I'm alone." She draws a breath. "Is this why? Something to do with your sister?"

"In a sense," Elsa says. "It's…strange. This whole week, I've felt so strange. There's things you say or do, and it's almost like she's –" Her breath is cold against Anna's neck. "It's been such a long time. I thought I was…I don't know."

Anna isn't really sure what to say. It all feels way heavier than she's equipped to handle. "You must miss her a lot."

"I do," Elsa says. "And then you, you just, you make me feel so unsteady. Like I'm coming undone." When Anna doesn't reply, she continues, "I'm sorry. Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"No."

"You can tell me if I am."

"Did you love her?"

Elsa pauses. "Of course," she says. "She was my sister."

"No," Anna says. "I mean, like – this thing, between us, whatever it is – why? Why me?"

Elsa is silent.

Her mouth moves as if it belongs to someone else. "Were you in love with her?"

Silence: still, terrifying. Anna shivers from the cold. Her head hurts somewhere behind her eyes, like she's been thinking too hard, chasing a memory that's written so deep in her synapses that it can't be reached anymore. It's a strange sort of déjà vu.

"What would you think of me if I said yes?"

She's not sure what she would think, so instead, she offers, "You can tell me anything." This all feels much…closer to her than it should, like the stakes are about Anna herself and not about Elsa's mysterious long-dead sister.

"I don't know," Elsa says. "She wasn't – it wasn't like that. We weren't like that."

"It was just you?" She strokes Elsa's hair, but her mind feels like it's elsewhere, on a whole other planet. How could Elsa ever think there was anything she had to keep from her? Nothing could change the way she felt. Nothing could change the fact that Elsa was the brightest, most beautiful person she'd ever met.

"Yes," Elsa says.

"Oh."

"It's awful, I know." She sniffs, just once, and pulls away. She blinks up at Anna through dark, wet eyelashes, looking much younger than she is. "You must be disgusted."

Anna leans forward and kisses her. It seems like it might help clear the throbbing in her head, like it might give her the clarity of thought she needs to untangle everything taking up space in her mind. Elsa's mouth is slack, at first, but Anna threads her fingers through the hair at the back of her head and pulls her in, hard, and Elsa follows with a whimper.

She's high on it, drunk, delirious with the headiness of Elsa's taste and smell and touch, soaring ten thousand feet in the sky, giddy even as her head pulses like it might split apart. She's out of her mind. She must be, because before she can think she mumbles, against Elsa's lips, "I think I love you."

Elsa freezes. "What?"

Oh, shit. Oh no.

"I love you," she breathes, again, and the more she says it the more right it feels. The words feel the same way Elsa's name does on her tongue: warm, safe, familiar.

"You don't," Elsa says. "You can't."

"I know what I feel."

"You can't be in love with someone you just met," Elsa says, lightly; it almost sounds like a joke. There it is again. That too-familiar feeling.

"I don't care what I _can't_ do, I just know what I –" She shuts her eyes tight, scrunches them up. "God, my head _hurts_."

"It does? Are you alright?" Elsa lays a cold hand across her forehead. "Does that help at all?"

"I feel like there's something you're not telling me," she says through gritted teeth. "Or like there's something I'm missing."

"I stressed you out, didn't I?"

"No, no, it's – I don't know. I feel weird." She forces her eyes open and looks into Elsa's. She's searching for an answer in their depths, but all she finds there is bright blue and fear and a sheen of shiny tears. Suddenly, everything she thought she knew is spiraling, circling the drain. How did Elsa come to occupy so much of her life and her heart so quickly? What happened to the rest of her life? How is it that just a week ago she was getting married and now she hasn't thought about Johnny in days?

Her life is beginning to feel like it happened to a different person, her memories and convictions now filtered through the tunnel vision-kaleidoscope of Elsa and the person she becomes around her. She's not sure how she feels about it. It's disorienting.

"I feel weird," she repeats. Her heart is beating a strange rhythm in her chest now, squeezing and fluttering and twisting. It feels cold, almost, like the bodily equivalent of brain freeze.

"Anna?" Elsa says. "What's wrong?"

She takes Elsa's face in her hands, gazes at her like the answer might be written in her features: her delicate brows, peaked with worry, her red, open mouth.

"Tell me more about your sister," she says, before the world goes black.


	12. interlude, pt ii

**1845, Arendelle**

Elsa can't quite put her finger on when things started changing between them, or if they ever actually started changing at all. It's possible, even probable, that on Anna's end everything is the same, and that Elsa's just inventing nonsense out of thin air. Maybe all those years in near-isolation caused her to lose her mind, and now Arendelle is stuck with a mad queen who can't stop thinking about her sister.

She blinks the sleep out of her eyes. It's a beautiful, clear summer night; her desk in her study faces a floor-to-ceiling window that opens onto a balcony, and when she looks up from her papers she can see scatterings of stars, tiny white pinpricks of light winking back at her. Anna's been asking her to go stargazing, and she keeps putting it off; now, she finds herself tempted to throw her work into the fire, take Anna's hand, and declare herself beholden to Anna's will for the night.

As it stands, Anna sits perched on the edge of her desk, legs crossed and swinging in the air, the hem of her dress fluttering up to reveal the bone of her ankle. She chews thoughtfully on the end of a fountain pen for a moment before scribbling something on the parchment she's holding. "Is this everything?" she says, then turns to look at the fresh stack of papers Elsa's just hauled to the desk. "Oh no."

"Oh, yes."

"God, I'm tired," Anna says. "Come to bed?"

"Not yet." Elsa conjures a bit of ice to press to the back of her neck, something she's always done to help herself stay alert during late-night work sessions. "You can always just go without me, you know."

Elsa knows, or hopes, that she won't. They haven't slept apart in years. Anna waits up for her, without fail, every night; it's turned into an unspoken rule of sorts, a ritual, a performance of this specific way in which they can care for each other: _you and me, together, always_. She knows this. But it still sends a secret thrill through her every time it's confirmed that Anna won't sleep without her.

"It's getting late," Anna says, her tone softening. She sidles around the corner of Elsa's desk, narrow hips shifting in her green dress, and slides into Elsa's lap, wraps her arms around her neck and shoulders, smiles that sweet little Anna-smile that's all the more enchanting this close.

This. This is what's different. The contact, the touching, the way Anna can't seem to keep her damn hands to herself. It isn't a bad thing; if it'd been anybody else, Elsa couldn't have tolerated it, but it fills her with a slow-burning warmth to know Anna has any desire to be near her. The more comfortable they get around each other, the closer Anna has to be. The warmth of her skin is like a drug, laudanum in Elsa's veins, a sweet and languorous high that pulses through her bloodstream and leaves her dizzy.

Anna tilts her head so that her forehead rests against Elsa's temple. "Come to bed," she says again, whispers it this time, hot breath fanning over Elsa's ear, making her shiver.

It's been a long time since the Thaw. She had thought it would go away with time, this nameless longing; she'd figured it was just a product of their long separation. They had spent thirteen years apart, after all, and all she'd had of Anna was rose-tinted memories and Anna's daily knocking at her door, evidence of her absurdly steadfast devotion. It was only natural that, once they were reunited, Elsa found herself wishing she never had to leave Anna's side, craving her embrace and her scent and her secret smiles.

Much to Elsa's chagrin, it has only gotten worse. Stronger. Harder to ignore. And…_different_.

She sets her pen down with a groan. Anna knows she can't say no to her. "You're incorrigible, you know that?"

"It's one of my best qualities," Anna singsongs. She hops off Elsa's lap and extends a hand to her, pulling her off her chair with more force than necessary. Elsa's wrist burns where Anna's fingers encircle it.

The halls are silent save for the crackling of the candles in their wall-mounts; it must be later than she realized. They walk the long path from the study to Elsa's room (_there's truly no reason for this castle to be this damn big_, she thinks), talking about nothing, giggling behind their hands to mask the sound.

"So," Elsa says, when they've finally reached her room. "How are wedding preparations going?"

She swallows past the lump that arises in her throat whenever she thinks of it. She has always known that Anna won't, can't (shouldn't) be hers forever – it's just that reality is coming up on them much quicker than she would like.

But it's happening, so Elsa might as well get used to it.

"Oh, just fine. I mean, it's still five months away," Anna says. "Kristoff's freaking out already, so I'm a little concerned for him, but I'm good."

"Good. You're not…nervous, at all?"

"Mmm, not really." She sits behind Elsa on the bed and runs her fingers through her braid, Elsa melting the icy pins that keep it together so that Anna can brush it out. "I mean, not much is gonna change, is it? It's not like I'm marrying some prince from far away. I'll stay in the castle, and Kristoff already lives here anyway. I guess the only difference is we'll sleep in the same room. Not that we don't already –" She stops and clears her throat awkwardly. "Um. The point is, things won't really change."

"You won't be able to sleep in here anymore," Elsa says, in a quiet, small voice that she barely recognizes as her own. She didn't really mean to voice the thought. It's ridiculous, and it makes her sound like a needy child.

But.

"Aw, Elsa," Anna says. "There's no rule saying I can't sometimes! We can have, like, little sleepovers. Whenever you want!"

"It won't be the same," she mumbles. She can't say what she really means, because it's awful and it'd sound so, so strange. _I don't want to stop being the most important person in your life. I don't want to lose you even a little bit_.

Anna's fingers go still. Elsa feels the mattress shift underneath her, and then Anna's arms are wrapped around her midriff, her lips peppering kisses into her hair.

"Nothing's going to change, especially between us," she says. "I promise."

"How can you promise that? How do you know?"

"Because you're the best person I know, and I love you, and that'll never change," Anna says. "And I'll never love anyone else more than I love you."

Elsa believes her.

xxx

It's a warm, windy night, the kind that signals the start of summer's transition into autumn and brings with it the promise of falling leaves and fireplaces, the kind where the air itself seems to be woven from wishes and dreams. They lie on their backs in a field somewhere a few miles out from the castle – Anna had made them walk out there, refusing to just ride as Elsa had suggested because, as she put it, "I don't want to make the horses stay up that late" – on an itchy picnic blanket foraged from the depths of Anna's closet.

"This one is Orion's belt," Elsa says, pointing. She has a collection of astronomy textbooks gathering dust somewhere at the back of a bookshelf; she'd skimmed back through them in preparation for tonight, hoping, foolishly, that Anna might be impressed with her knowledge.

"I think it's more fun to make up names for them," Anna says.

"Hmm. Give me an example."

"Okay, umm…" She points at a little cluster of stars to the west that gleams and winks at them from above. "That right there. I'll call that one Elsa."

"Why's that?"

"Because it's the prettiest one up there," Anna says. Even in the dim light of the moon, Elsa can see her roguish wink, and a guilty blush crawls up her cheeks.

"_Well_, then." She giggles. "It's a good thing you're not a prince, or all the eligible ladies of Arendelle would be in serious trouble."

"I wouldn't go for just _any_ Arendellian woman," Anna says. "I'd woo a princess from somewhere else. Somewhere fancy."

"Awfully high standards for someone set to marry a man who talks to reindeer."

Anna laughs. "You got me there."

Lying side-by-side on the small blanket, their shoulders brushing each other's, Elsa thinks: if life could be like this forever, just her and Anna taking on the world, she wouldn't want for anything else ever again. She's got all she needs right here, wrapped up in this magnetic firecracker of a girl.

It's a thought that's plagued her again and again over the past three years. It's a thought that she needs to disabuse herself of as soon as possible, because Anna has always been destined for greater things, greater loves, than the paltry affections Elsa has to offer her.

"Your turn," Anna says.

Elsa squints hard at the sky for a long while, trying to find something new to give her own name to, but she's too preoccupied to make use of her imagination.

"Do you see those two lines, there? The ones that look like they're connected?"

Anna aims her index finger at the sky and looks to Elsa. "Show me."

Elsa closes her hand over Anna's, weaving her fingers through the spaces between Anna's knuckles, and guides her in tracing out the constellation.

"Oh! Yeah, I see it now."

"That's Gemini," Elsa says. "The twins. You remember the story of Castor and Pollux? From our classics lessons?"

Anna lowers her hand and turns onto her side. "You know I never paid attention." She scoots over and closes the little distance that Elsa had left between them, tucking her head beneath Elsa's chin and resting her arm around Elsa's midsection. Elsa shivers. "Remind me."

"Well, Castor and Pollux were twins – or maybe half-brothers? I don't remember the details. They were children of Zeus, I think. The point is, they loved each other very much and were said to be inseparable –"

"Sounds familiar."

"Let me finish the story before you start comparing them to us," Elsa says, bopping Anna on the nose. "As the myth goes, Castor was killed in a dispute, and Pollux begged Zeus to let him give up part of his own immortality to share with his brother. So Zeus allowed them to spend half their time in the underworld and half their time in the heavens." She presses a kiss to the top of Anna's head. "In some versions of the story, they became the constellation Gemini. Together for eternity."

Anna whistles, long and low. "That's heavy."

"Yeah," Elsa says. She regrets bringing it up, a little. Now all she can think about is herself and Anna, up in the heavens, by each other's side forever.

For a few minutes, they lay in silence. Elsa brings one arm up around Anna's shoulders, and Anna curls up tighter against her, and it gives her the courage to wrap her other arm around Anna as well. They hold each other and look up at the sky, at the lights of the village in the distance, breathing steadily and in sync.

"Okay, this is going to sound weird," Anna says, "but do you ever wish you could just…run away?"

"I have run away, remember? It's not all it's cracked up to be."

Anna snorts. "That's not what I meant. I mean, like..." She sighs. "I dunno. Don't you ever get tired of all this royalty stuff? Having to act a certain way and live a certain kind of life? Especially in a place like Arendelle, where there's, like, a few hundred people total, and everyone's super invested in your business?"

"What's this about?" Elsa says. She tries to sit up, because it seems like Anna is getting at something more serious, but Anna clutches at the collar of her coat and keeps her close.

"I guess I just – I don't know. It's hard being a princess."

"Try being a queen."

"Oh, shut up," Anna says. "Just humor me for a minute. If you could leave all this behind and go anywhere in the world, where would you go?"

Elsa considers it. "France, I think. Paris. It's the home of philosophy, science, math, politics. I'd love to just sit in cafes and read and argue all day. What about you?"

"Mmm. Maybe America? I've always wanted to see it, and it seems so, like…free? Like, brave new world and all, y'know? But mostly I'd want to go wherever you'd go."

"Not Kristoff?" Elsa asks, doing her best to tamp down the hopeful edge to her question.

"Well, we'd take him along, obviously." Anna sighs. "Doesn't matter, anyway. Obviously we're not going to be running off to Paris or America anytime soon."

"In another life, maybe," Elsa says, closing her eyes.

"In another life," Anna says.

**xxx**

In her dreams, she stands by the fjord with Anna by her side. The spray from the nearby waterfall cools their faces, and the world is silent and seemingly empty save for the two of them. Anna takes her hand. She mumbles something that Elsa can't quite make out, and then pulls her closer, closer, too close, until they are facing each other and standing so close their noses could touch. Anna's eyes are half-lidded, and they flutter shut as she moves in, rests her forehead against Elsa's, cups her cheek with her hand, shifts so that their stomachs press together...

At this point in the dream, Elsa always wakes up. She doesn't know what is supposed to happen after that point, and she's not sure she wants to find out. She wakes up with sweaty palms and a hard-beating heart.

**xxx**

"Your Majesty," Gerda says, startling Elsa out of the pages of _The Wealth of Nations_, which lies open across her lap in what she'd thought was a private corner of the library. She's not sure how Gerda found her here. She'll have to find a new spot for when she wants to be alone. Something a bit more secluded.

"Good afternoon, Gerda," she says. "What can I do for you?"

"It's Princess Anna." When Elsa drops her book in her haste to stand, she quickly adds, "Everything is okay. She just wanted to see you. She's in her dressing room."

Right. The fitting is today. She thought she'd forgotten, but maybe some part of her had remembered and led her to spend half the day squirreled away with no one but Adam Smith to keep her company. But it is Anna, after all, and it's her _wedding dress_. Of course she'd want Elsa to take a look at it before everything is finalized.

Her hands shake a little as she walks to Anna's room. She's not sure why. She flexes them and allows little tendrils of snow to escape from them, a paltry pressure-release valve in the face of her sudden, inexplicable nerves.

When she steps into the dressing room, it's all she can do to not audibly gasp.

The dress is a pearl-white that is only made more beautiful because of the contrast it strikes with all the color that is Anna: tanned skin, bright teal eyes, and fiery hair. It has a wide neckline that displays Anna's sinfully sharp collarbones and the freckles scattered across her shoulders. The fabric drapes almost loosely across her body, somehow making her curves all the more alluring for what it doesn't show, except at the waist, where it narrows a bit, hugging Anna's frame, before flaring again at the hips. The train is made of a delicate, lacy material - one misstep and it'll tear, Elsa's sure, so Anna will have to practice walking down the aisle enough that there's no risk of tripping on the day itself.

Her sister is beautiful, so naturally elegant that it makes her breath catch in her throat. Elsa wants to cry.

Anna clears her throat, and Elsa remembers that she hasn't said anything yet, and that she is surrounded by a roomful of people giving her some very expectant looks that are sure to turn confused if she keeps staring like this.

"Wow," she says.

"Is that a good wow or a bad wow?" Anna tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Good wow, definitely," Elsa says. She steps a little closer. She feels delirious. "Anna, I – you look beautiful."

For a moment, Anna just smiles at her. Then, perhaps realizing that they're still in the presence of the tailor and her assistants, she says, "Could I have a moment alone with my sister, please?"

"Of course, Your Highness," the tailor says with a nervous curtsy. She's young, Elsa notes, as she scurries out of the room, but obviously talented. She'll have to remember to hire her as the family's official tailor, or whatever title comes closest to that position.

"Now you can tell me what you really think," Anna says. She twirls, and the bottom half of the dress flutters and spins.

"That was what I really think. _Wow_," Elsa says. "Kristoff is going to faint when he sees you."

"Wouldn't that be something? Swooning at the altar."

"The bishop will have to catch him."

Anna giggles. "Wait, there's one more thing." She bends to pick something up, then says, "Oh, but close your eyes first!"

"Fine," Elsa says, bemused.

Anna fiddles with something for a moment before saying, "Okay, you can look."

She opens her eyes to see Anna blinking up at her, teal eyes glowing, through the gauzy shimmer of an intricate white veil that falls to her waist. The translucence of the fabric lends her face an ethereal, hazy quality; it makes her look like a mirage or a vision of an angel, one descended to earth just to bring a little piece of heaven into Elsa's life, to make her holy just by touching her.

"God," Elsa says.

"I didn't know if it was tacky or not," Anna says shyly. "It's not too much, is it?"

"Definitely not," Elsa says. With both hands, as if in a trance, she lifts the veil off Anna's face. Gently, tenderly, she pushes it up and back, revealing the full depth and beauty of those eyes, of that smile, the one directed so completely toward Elsa right now, soft and trusting and fervent and fragile.

Elsa brushes Anna's bangs off her face and runs her knuckles along her cheekbone. She half-expects Anna to pull away, maybe with an awkward chuckle at how strange she's acting, but Anna leans into the touch without so much as glancing away.

"I'm so proud of you," Elsa whispers, her voice suddenly thick. "The person you've become. I don't know how you managed to grow into someone so incredible, considering our childhood and, well, me –" She chokes out a wet laugh as Anna purses her lips and gives a little shake of her head. "You know what I mean. I wish…I wish I could have been there for you. Growing up, I mean."

"Hey, hey," Anna says, interrupting what is quickly turning into a teary ramble. "None of that, okay? We're past all that."

"I know. It's just been on my mind lately."

Lately, it has become painfully clear that Anna and her wellbeing have always been the keystone of her existence, the central tenet of her purpose. Everything about her begins and ends with Anna. Clearer still is the fact that Anna does not need _her_ the same way. She has always known this, of course, but the impending marriage will put it into more concrete terms, bound by laws and vows and religious oaths.

"What's important is you're here now," Anna says. She takes a step closer, then another – slowly, rhythmically, almost like a wedding march – until they are close enough that their noses could touch with just a tilt of Elsa's head. "We're here now. Together."

Elsa nods.

"It's you and me, right? Always."

"Always," Elsa repeats, entranced.

xxx

For so long, Anna's wedding has seemed like an abstract eventuality, a far-away fantasy that looms over Elsa but poses no threat of actually coming to pass, until suddenly it's the night before and the two of them are huddled together in Anna's bedroom, giggling and talking like nothing is different while Elsa tries to quell her growing dread. It's late and the fire has died down, leaving only a few candles to light the room.

"I'm so _happy_," Anna sighs. She takes a chocolate from the array spread out on a tray before them – Elsa had them specially made for Anna – and pops it into her mouth. The smile on her face is enough to keep the streets of Arendelle lit for centuries, Elsa's sure.

"I'm happy for you," she says, and it's true; seeing Anna this buoyant is worth having to grapple with whatever green-eyed monster seems to have sunk its claws into her. "You deserve every bit of tomorrow, Anna."

"I wasn't even talking about tomorrow, really."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, it's just – okay, you're too far away from me right now. C'mere."

Anna pats the spot right next to her and motions for Elsa, who has been maintaining a studied distance from her, to come closer. (Here is part of the problem: it is so damn _hard_ to stay away from Anna, especially when their bodies fit together so perfectly, like they were made to hold each other.) Elsa leans against the headboard next to Anna and lets her head fall onto her shoulder. Anna wraps both arms around her waist and her heartbeat quickens so suddenly she's almost afraid Anna can feel it thudding against her, as loud and urgent as footsteps.

"It's just…" Anna continues, "you, I guess. Or…us. This," she says, gesturing between the two of them. "Before your coronation I would've never, in a million years, thought this could ever be possible."

"What do you mean, 'this'?"

"Just getting to be together. Getting to really know you. You letting me love you, and – and I don't know, being loved in return."

Something is different about tonight. Elsa can feel it. She's not sure if it's in the way Anna's looking at her, eyes flashing hot and dark in the flickering firelight, or the nature of her words themselves, but she can feel it. Something has shifted between them.

She thinks back to all those months ago, when she'd first managed to put words to her worry that things would change between them after Anna's marriage. Anna had told her what she'd wanted to hear: that no, nothing would change, that no one could take Elsa's place in her life. She wonders if Anna still feels the same way; she almost asks, but thinks better of it. It's not Anna's job to make Elsa feel better every time her mind invents a new, ridiculous fear for her to fixate on.

So she doesn't mention it. This is _their _night, maybe the last night they'll have to themselves like this before Anna's priorities shift.

"I know what you mean," Elsa says. "This is all I've ever really wanted. You know, it's funny – everything I did, everything I ever put myself through, it was always for you, nothing else. But I never imagined I would actually ever get to be with you like this."

"Really?" Anna says quietly. "Even after your coronation? What did you think was going to happen?"

"I don't know." She laughs, because really – what had she been expecting? "I assumed the gates would open and you would find a prince or something and…go be happy somewhere else."

"Without you?"

"Yes," Elsa says, without hesitation. "You always had so much _life_ in you. It never occurred to me that I actually had anything to offer you. You just…had all the love in the world to give, and no one to direct it at for so long." She smiles ruefully. "I was prepared to do whatever I had to do to ensure you got to be safe from me for the rest of your life."

Anna presses a kiss to the top of Elsa's head. "Y'know, you might be the smarter one, but you sure can be dumb sometimes."

Elsa laughs. "Even now," she says, "if I believed that that was what it took to protect you, I would do it in a heartbeat. Without question." She waits, expecting Anna to playfully chide her again for being dramatic, but Anna is still and silent beside her.

"Don't say things like that," she says, her voice suddenly quiet and serious. She takes Elsa's hand in her own, strokes the palm of it with her thumb, sending goosebumps all up and down Elsa's arm. "You know I could never be happy without you."

_As a matter of fact_, she wants to say, _I don't know that at all. _"Mmm," she says instead. She buries her nose in the crook of Anna's neck, closing her eyes and trying to etch this moment into her memory, but Anna hooks a finger under her chin and tilts her head up until they're making eye contact.

"Elsa," she says. (No one else has ever said her name the way Anna does: delicately, like it is so fragile it might break if not handled with enough care.) "I'm being serious."

All of the candles have gone out, save for the one on Anna's nightstand. Elsa isn't sure if she's responsible for that; these days, she rarely loses control of her powers, but she can still cause the occasional stray breeze if she's not paying attention. The light from the single flame dances across the planes of Anna's face, throwing her features into sharp relief. Her eyes smolder with something unnamable, eyebrows set in a serious furrow, hair loose and hanging around her face, cascading down her shoulders. In the dim candlelight, she looks more beautiful than ever. Elsa's heart leaps.

Anna's hand is still under her chin. She tips her head forward until their foreheads are touching, Anna's warmth a salve to the coolness of her own skin, the tips of their noses just barely brushing.

"Anna?" Elsa whispers, because although they have shared moments like this in the past, the way Anna's caressing Elsa's cheek and looking at her, so intently and knowingly she feels like she's being stripped bare, makes this particular moment feel…different.

"Shh," Anna says. Her breath is hot against Elsa's mouth.

She shivers, mute, and lets her eyes flutter shut. So she doesn't see Anna's eyes close in unison, doesn't see the way she parts her lips a little and leans in just a bit, only feels: Anna's fingers threading through her hair to pull her closer, her other hand gripping her waist.

Whether it's delirium brought on by being this close to Anna, drunk on the scent of Anna's lavender soap and the curve of her body beneath the thin fabric of her nightgown, or simply an inability to care about resisting anymore, Elsa doesn't know; whatever it is, it feels like she no longer has any control over her own actions.

Like a marionette on strings, propelled by an unseen force, she closes the distance between them and captures Anna's lips in her own. It's a gentle kiss. Hesitant. Anna tastes of the berries they'd just shared at dessert, sweet and tangy and so unmistakably Anna. It's everything she's ever imagined, but more, better somehow; Anna is real and alive and there _with _her, if only for this brief moment. It only takes a second for Elsa to come to her senses and pull away, fully expecting to see any number of things reflected in Anna's eyes: confusion, disgust, hate.

What she doesn't expect is for Anna to pull her in again and kiss her in earnest.

_I'm dreaming_, Elsa thinks.

She has to be dreaming. Or dying, perhaps, and this blissful moment is just the final fantasy of a fevered mind. What other explanation could there be for all of her wildest, most secret dreams coming true in just a moment, every silent sinful desire she'd been too afraid of to voice even to herself laid bare in front of her?

Anna breaks the kiss after just a moment, pulling away and leaving Elsa feeling like she's drowning.

"Elsa," Anna mumbles.

"I love you," Elsa says wetly, and when their lips meet again the kiss tastes of salt and tears. Elsa kisses Anna fervently; she's wanted this for too long to be self-conscious about it, and she doesn't think she'll ever get to do it again, and she still isn't convinced it's real. She kisses Anna with the force of years and years of unspoken longing, bottled up and kept in the dark for so long that now it fizzes and sparks and threatens to boil over into something she can't control, until Anna separates them with a gentle push at her shoulders.

Elsa keeps her eyes closed, just rests her forehead against Anna's. This is far more complicated than the easy sweetness of a kiss, she knows, and Anna is marrying Kristoff in the morning, and whatever this was between them can never, ever, go any further, and besides, Anna is probably only acting strangely due to pre-wedding jitters, or something like that.

But Elsa can allow herself to have a moment to pretend.

"Anna," Elsa starts, "I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking, I – "

"Hey, no, shh," Anna says. "Tomorrow. For now let's just go to bed."

xxx

Tomorrow, it turns out, doesn't quite pan out the way Elsa wants it to.

The wedding is beautiful, of course, but Elsa spends most of it in a daze of sorts, watching the day's proceedings as if from underwater. She walks Anna down the aisle in lieu of their father, as she'd promised months before, but Anna's grip on her arm is the only thing keeping her anchored to the present moment. Without her – when she's finally up on the altar, or dancing with Kristoff at the reception – Elsa comes unmoored, a ship in search of its shore, her mind wandering numbly.

They never do get a chance to talk about things. The day is occupied with last-minute preparations, welcoming guests, getting Anna ready, making small-talk with visiting nobles at the reception, and countless other little errands that tick away their time together until finally Anna and Kristoff are climbing into a carriage, off to the little mountainside chalet where they'll be spending their honeymoon.

But there are a few moments, throughout the course of the day, when Elsa thinks she spots Anna throwing her a sad glance over Kristoff's shoulder, or when she hears an undercurrent of want hiding behind Anna's dinnertime conversation.

_Foolish_, she thinks. _You're imagining things_.

The next few days pass without incident. Elsa buries herself in her work; when the work runs out, she makes more for herself, studying tomes from the library that belch clouds of dust at her when she pulls them down from the shelves. Idle moments find her thoughts wandering to Anna: the question of what their last night together _meant_, if anything, and how, exactly, Elsa can disentangle herself from this bramble of feelings. (Because that's what she has to do; she knows it as plainly as she knows her love for Anna.)

Four days after the wedding, everything changes so suddenly and violently, it feels as though Elsa has left her own reality and entered a parallel universe where nothing makes sense.

When the nightmare starts, she's up in her study, the one where her desk faces the window that looks out onto the main thoroughfare to the castle. It's an unseasonably foggy morning; the sun still isn't fully up, and the clouds cling tight to the ground, making the light from the gas-lamps look like orbs of fire. Still, even from the second-floor study, Elsa can make out something strange: Kristoff and Anna's carriage, on its way back a week too early.

Something's wrong. She knows it without even having to really know.

She tries to maintain some semblance of composure as she makes her way to the gates, settling for a rapid clip down the stairs (why does this castle have so many damn stairs, anyway? And whose idea was it to make them all _spiral_?) rather than a less-dignified sprint. She meets Kristoff at the door, looking pale and worried.

"Elsa, thank goodness," Kristoff says, and despite everything his presence is always reassuring somehow, an ally united with her in the common cause of loving Anna.

"You're back early," she says, trying and failing to tamp down her growing dread. "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, it's, um – " he stammers. He's always so stoic, so sturdy and reliable, that seeing him visibly panic is jarring. "It's, ah, it's Anna."

Elsa's blood freezes in her veins. _Anna_. Her mind conjures up a never-ending list of all her worst fears, come to life: Anna injured, Anna suffering, Anna dead, each vision more nightmarish than the last.

Behind Kristoff, a couple of the castle guardsmen are clustered around the carriage, peeking inside, helping Anna out, and a crowd of servants has gathered. Elsa pushes past them, all queenly manners forgotten, until she reaches Anna.

"Oh, hey," Anna says weakly when she sees her. Her normally ruddy skin has a sickly pallor to it; when Elsa goes to grasp her hand, her skin is clammy, almost cold to the touch, but sweat is beading up on her forehead. Still, her smile upon seeing Elsa is as radiant as ever.

"What happened?" Elsa says. She shoos the guards away and puts an arm around Anna to help support her as they walk inside. "Are you ill? Did you eat something funny, or – or stay out in the cold for too long, maybe? What are you feeling?"

Anna rolls her eyes. "Knew you were gonna start mothering me as soon as I got back," she says through chattering teeth.

"I don't know what it is," Kristoff says. "Everything was fine, and then – just – yesterday she said she wasn't feeling great, and then today she woke up like…this."

"I can speak for myself, Kristoff," Anna grumbles, and Kristoff just smiles and shakes his head.

The two of them help Anna to her room; Kristoff has to carry her up the stairs, and it's a testament to how preoccupied Elsa is that she doesn't even register the familiar pang of jealousy she would otherwise have felt. He lays Anna on her bed and then stands uneasily next to Elsa, as if awaiting instruction.

"M'head hurts," Anna mumbles. "Could someone take the blankets off? It's so freaking hot in here."

Elsa and Kristoff exchange a look. The room is as chilly as the rest of the castle in winter.

"Kristoff, go fetch Dr. Ibsen, would you?" Elsa says.

"On it," Kristoff says, darting out and closing the door behind him.

Elsa kneels by Anna's bedside. "Tell me what's wrong, darling," she whispers, brushing Anna's sweat-soaked bangs off her forehead.

"I just feel tired, really," Anna says. Her eyes are half-lidded. "And hot. Actually, c-could you help me with that? Just cool me down a little?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea," she says. She presses her palm to Anna's forehead, and Anna hisses with relief. "Anna, you're burning up."

"Keep your hand there, please," Anna says, and Elsa can't find it in her to say no.

Dr. Ibsen comes in, takes a look at Anna while Kristoff and Elsa pace anxiously. He fixes them with grim looks, tells them something vague about not being able to tell what this is, about mysterious ailments that come and go with nothing more than some medicine to try to bring the fever down. He gives Anna something to drink and a few empty, reassuring words that do nothing to make Elsa feel better.

That night, it's Elsa who Anna asks to spend the night with her, not Kristoff. She cradles Anna in her arms as she sweats and shivers and sighs.

"I can tell you're worrying yourself sick," Anna says. "No pun intended."

"I hate seeing you in pain," Elsa says.

"I know. But it'll be _fine_, Elsa. It's probably just one of those seasonal things, y'know. Changing weather and all that."

"Yeah," Elsa agrees, unconvinced.

Anna's too hot to fall asleep that night, though, so Elsa conjures up a miniature snowstorm to blanket the room in flurries and snowdrifts. "Wanna build a snowman?" she says, and feels Anna shake with laughter in her arms.

"Actually, yeah," Anna says, but she's too weak to really move, so Elsa uses her magic to make a tiny living snowman that immediately sprints to the edge of the bed and falls off. It makes Anna smile, so Elsa does it again, and again, and again, until there are hundreds of little snow people mulling about the room. When Anna finally falls asleep, Elsa closes her eyes and prays.

When Anna wakes next, it's well past noon and Dr. Ibsen is back in her room, accompanied by a few other royal physicians.

She looks up at Elsa, eyes wide, and says "How long was I out?"

The doctors all wear the same resigned looks. Elsa knows what they mean.

xxx

Anna's condition deteriorates rapidly; her fever climbs and climbs, and her complaints about being too hot quickly turn into chills and shivering.

(Anna doesn't say anything about Elsa's powers making it worse, of course, but Elsa sees the way her touch begins to send Anna's teeth chattering. It feels like an accusation, an indictment: _witch_, she thinks, _it's you who's doing this to her_, and the demons she thought she was done wrestling with suddenly seem to have returned. One night, after Anna has fallen asleep, she pulls her old gloves out of her chest in the attic and puts them on whenever she has to touch Anna.)

The doctors all say the same thing: they've never seen anything like this before, they don't know what's wrong, there's nothing to do but wait, and all Elsa can do is grit her teeth and sit by Anna's beside, day and night.

It takes a week. Seven days to the hour – it's early morning when she goes.

"Look, the sky's awake," Anna slurs, her eyes glassy and distant. Elsa just smiles and hopes Anna can't feel the sob she's choking back. Now is not the time for weakness – Anna needs her big sister. The northern lights dance in the sky outside, lending Anna's face a green, ghostly glow, and they lie there for what feels like hours, with Elsa holding tight every part of Anna she can grasp and hoping enough of Anna is still there to feel it.

Anna's eyes roll in her skull. Her eyelids flicker – closed, open, closed, open. Finally she fixes her gaze on Elsa's face. She whispers, plaintively, like a child, "Elsa?"

"I'm right here," Elsa mumbles. "I'm right here, Anna, I've got you. I love you." The words come out in a jumble, all at once, "I love you, it's okay, you're gonna be okay."

"Elsa," Anna says, and then she's gone.

xxx

There is a moment, every morning, when Elsa wakes up and forgets, looks groggily to the other side of the bed expecting to see Anna snoring and drooling next to her. Every morning, the empty space next to her brings her violently and cruelly back to reality, in which Anna is gone and everything is cold and empty and gray. And every day she has to wake up and get out of bed and meet with her council and do her work and continue to exist in a world in which everything is so wrong it feels as if, logically, the universe itself should be rent apart.

Three days after Anna's death, nearly out of her mind with grief, Elsa goes to see the trolls, and it's only then that she learns the full extent of what her powers have in store for her.

"Please," she begs Grand Pabbie, on her knees, her face buried in her hands, "_please_, let me die, tell me how, I can't – I've tried to – I can't _do _this without her and I don't know why I can't just – it should be _me _and not her and I don't know what to – " Her voice cuts off at a choked sob, and it's a testament to how far gone she is that she doesn't even spare athought to the indignity of crying in front of this many strangers.

"I'm so very sorry, Your Majesty," Pabbie says, his voice deep and grave. "I cannot begin to imagine the extent of your grief."

There's a moment of solemn silence as the rest of the trolls lower their heads to her, some murmuring words of sympathy. They had all loved Anna. Everyone had loved Anna. How could you not? To know her was to love her, and to Elsa, she was her North, her South, her East, her West, and now she is just _gone_, and Elsa is nothing without her. Anna had been the only person who had ever truly known her, who had ever loved her. Yes, she still has a kingdom, but if she's honest with herself she knows her subjects don't care about her. They _fear _her, nothing more and nothing less, but they don't care and they certainly have no semblance of love or respect for her beyond what her title gives her. That's what she'd always relied on Anna for, Anna who could navigate the village pubs with ease and Anna who listened to each and every townsperson who came to the castle with a grievance and Anna who shined brilliant as the sun, with Elsa merely a moon reflecting her light.

She grasps the ground with her hands, tearing out fistfuls of grass and not caring about how they freeze and shatter in her grip. "I can't live like this," she whispers, and Grand Pabbie takes her hand in his – cold flesh against cold stone – and tells her everything he knows. Tells her her soul must be one with ice and snow and wind and water, somehow, and that just as the elements persevere unchanged by the march of time, so too will she. He tells her she may never age past her twenty-six years, tells her not only does she have to make it through _this _life without Anna, but she'll be surviving a _million _lifetimes, alone and cold and unfeeling.

"_What?_" Elsa says. "No, I – no, that's impossible."

But then, as she looks desperately at him with no words other than _please help me_, he tells her something that will be her lifeline for the next two hundred-odd years.

"Listen to me, Elsa," Pabbie says. "There is much we do not know about your magic, but this much I am sure of: it is more powerful, and more mysterious, than anything I have ever encountered before. You already know that the cornerstone of your powers is love; it follows, then, that you and your sister are bound by forces much deeper than blood."

"I don't understand."

She doesn't understand all of what he tells her, but she understands this much – that Anna may not be gone forever, and that he doesn't know much about this magic but they may cross paths someday if fate wills it, and it's a lot of _maybes _but it has to be something because Elsa doesn't know how she's going to keep going on if she doesn't have at least this to hold on to.

"I cannot offer you much by way of material comfort," Pabbie finishes, "but from what I know of this type of magic, I suspect that this life and this death may not be the end for her."

"Thank you," she tells Pabbie before she leaves, and he fixes her with a look so sad she has to avert her eyes.

As soon as Elsa returns to the castle, she heads straight for the library, digging up the oldest, more arcane texts she can find about death. Most of what she reads is unclear, but the texts do mention rebirth, and souls bound by magic and love and all sorts of fanciful things that might otherwise have sounded like distant fantasies if it weren't for the fact that this is, really, her last hope.

She'll wait for Anna. If it takes a thousand years, if there's even the slightest chance in hell of some miracle that makes it possible to see that smile again, she'll wait for her.

After a few additional weeks of misery, Elsa abdicates. Maybe it's because she's mad with grief and love, but Arendelle holds nothing for her anymore, not when every room in that castle smells like Anna. She picks a regent – the smartest and most capable of her councilors – and then she packs whatever she can fit on her bag and just _leaves_.

Olaf's melted. Elsa guesses whatever magic held him together had as much to do with Anna as it did with her, and so she's not surprised when he withers away bit-by-bit until he's nothing but another memory of what she had and lost. Kristoff spends all his time in the stables with Sven and Elsa can't even bear to look at him. She knows she should talk to him, knows they're suffering through the same thing, but she can't bear to face anyone who knows exactly the weight of what she's lost.

She goes to Paris first. Then London, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, then smaller towns when she runs out of places that will make her heart scream for Anna. She spends the better part of a century flitting from place to place like this, and at some point the sharp spear of grief dulls to a steady throb, until she can recall the sound of Anna's laugh without curling into herself and sobbing until her chest feels hollow. Days bleed into weeks, weeks bleed into months and years and then, slowly, somehow, it becomes _harder _to remember – when it's been a hundred years since the last time Elsa saw Anna, she finds herself struggling to recall the exact teal shade of her eyes, and then it becomes a daily ritual to remind herself of everything she'd loved about Anna, a liturgy she repeats to keep herself sane.

The years go by like this. It's all empty save for the memories. Oh, she takes the occasional lover, studies at the world's best universities and works to fill her time, but Pabbie's words are all that echo in her mind, day in and day out. It's a terrible way to live, but Elsa knows she would do anything, _anything_, for the chance to see Anna again. She often used to think how she'd follow Anna to the ends of the earth. Following her across centuries and across lifetimes isn't that different, is it?

More years pass. Economies surge and collapse, a couple world wars go by, man lands on the moon, et cetera – it's all a cold, grey blur to Elsa.

Until one day – just about 150 years after Anna's death, which is how she still measures her time – she _feels _something.

It's subtle, at first. Just the faintest blush of something different, something in her world that's shifted. She ignores it as best as she can – she's never been one for intuition or gut feelings or any of that nonsense.

Resolutely, stubbornly, she keeps living as before. Running away has served her well enough in the past, she thinks; what's a couple more years spent ignoring her problems?

But it gets stronger. Blooms from the hint of a change to a feeling that settles in her veins and then rises, like hot air, till it feels like a jet stream buoying her heart. Ocean currents swirling, pulling, tugging at her bones, until she _can't _ignore it anymore. Because the feeling's _warm_, and it's _pointing _her to something – or, as she can't bear to let herself hope, some_one. _

A familiar mantra presents itself to her. Don't feel it, don't feel it, don't feel it, because feeling it means _hope _– hope for something too absurd to be possible.

But again and again, she thinks about what Pabbie said.

She moves to America. _Just needed a change_, she tells herself, and avoids acknowledging whatever it is her stomach's doing as her plane's wheels hit the tarmac in Cleveland.

_Cleveland_, Elsa thinks. She allows herself a smile at that thought. God, she must _really_ still be lovesick if she's willing to haul herself to _Ohio _for –

No.

Still, even after all these years, she's s_till_ not strong enough to put her hopes into words. It would be too much, to have a concrete _shape _to what she thinks all this means, and then to be wrong.

It's enough to just live with this warmth. In America, the nameless, formless pull coalesces until it's something so strong it's almost tangible. It tells her she's _where she's meant to be_, and at this point she's too sold on the idea to put up anything more than cursory mental resistance. Damn rationality, damn reason, she's a woman who can make ice out of thin air, for god's sake – who is she to say this feeling in the pit of her gut doesn't mean anything?

And then – one day, some twenty-odd years later – she's having a moment to herself in her car when she looks up and she sees _her. _Anna.

_Anna._

Then she tamps down her fluttering heart, thinks no no it's not possible, until the woman unleashes an unmistakable string of word vomit that's all too familiar, and Elsa knows she's already hopelessly, hopelessly lost to her.


End file.
